Survey of the Pentateuch

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Well, good evening, everyone.
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Everyone comfortable? Ready for the next hour and a half? Okay, well, we are continuing tonight in our survey of the Old Testament.
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And tonight, we are going to be doing a survey of the Pentateuch.
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Now, as we begin, I just want to define that particular term.
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Most of us are probably familiar with it, but some of you may not be.
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And so the term Pentateuch refers to five books.
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The word tukioi is the word for scroll.
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So the last part refers to scrolls.
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And penta means five.
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So we have essentially the Pentateuch is the five scrolls or the five books.
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And it's traditionally been referred to as the books of Moses.
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So the Pentateuch is the first five books of the Bible, the books of Moses.
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Now, you remember last week that we talked about the fact that the Hebrew Bible is referred to sometimes as the Tanakh.
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You remember there were three Hebrew phrases referencing the Law, the Writings, and the Prophets.
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Or the Law, the Prophets, and the Writings.
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You had the Torah, the Nevi'im, and the Ketuvim.
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Well, the Torah is also another name for the first five books of the Bible.
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So you can refer to it as the Pentateuch or you can simply refer to it as the Torah.
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And the word Torah means Law.
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So the Pentateuch means five scrolls or five books.
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The word Torah means Law or Instruction.
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And I want to read a quote from Griffith Thomas on the Pentateuch.
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The five books of the Pentateuch record the introduction of the divine religion into the world.
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Each book gives one phase of God's plan and together they constitute a real unity.
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Genesis speaks of the origin of the religion and of the people of God chosen as its medium.
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Exodus records the formation of the people into a nation and the establishment of God's relationship with it.
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Leviticus shows the various ways in which the relationship was maintained.
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Numbers shows how the people were organized for the purpose of commencing the life of divine religion in the promised land.
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This book also tells of the nation's failure and the consequent delay with reorganization.
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Then Deuteronomy shows how the people were prepared while on the border of the promised land for entry was soon to follow.
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So that is Griffith Thomas' explanation of the unity and the familial nature of the first five books of the Bible.
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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.
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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.
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Since the whole Bible is reliant upon these five books, it stands to reason why they are so often attacked.
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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.
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Don't ever let anyone fool you.
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Don't ever let anyone say, as Christians, we don't need the Old Testament.
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As Christians, we can do away with the Old Testament.
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In fact, recently, and when I say recently, remember how my mind works.
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I feel like yesterday was 1999, so it's hard sometimes when I say recently.
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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.
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We need to unhitch from the Old Testament.
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He would later backpedal and come out and sort of step back and say, well, maybe his words were a little ill-informed.
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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.
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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.
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That's the foundation of our faith.
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We don't believe in a book, we believe in an event.
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We believe in the resurrection.
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That's the basis of his argument.
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The problem is, that event is found in a book.
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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.
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You see, the Bible does stand or fall together.
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And while a lot of people take issue with that, we really shouldn't.
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We should see the Bible as a whole unit, and understand that the foundations of that Bible are in the first five books.
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Think about what all is in these first five books.
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The identity of God.
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The explanation of His nature.
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The understanding of how He is satisfied through the process of propitiation and sacrifice.
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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.
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He doesn't apologize.
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He doesn't beg Aaron's forgiveness for taking his sons.
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He says, those who approach Me will understand that I am holy.
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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.
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You see, God invests in these five books His character.
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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.
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We cannot write these books off.
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These books are the very foundations.
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I'll give you an example.
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You all are probably familiar with this name.
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His name is Ken Ham.
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He's with Answers in Genesis.
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And he has a PowerPoint presentation that I've seen him give several times.
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And the PowerPoint presentation is two castles.
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And one castle is supposed to be Christianity, and the other castle is supposed to be ungodly, worldly thinking.
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I forget what word he uses, but it's basically the world.
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So you have the church and the world.
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And from this castle, the church, they're firing arrows over the top.
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And this castle over here, the world, is firing cannons at the foundation.
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Which one's going to succeed? Well, we know the gates of hell will not prevail against the church.
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The world will never succeed in destroying the church.
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But at the same time, the point in the visual is very well made.
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The point is that the attack that comes against the Word is at the foundations of the Word.
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The attack that comes against the Word is against the very beginning.
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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.
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One of the most famous attacks against the Pentateuch is called the Documentary Hypothesis.
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I think if you are taking notes, that would be a good thing to write down.
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The Documentary Hypothesis.
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The Documentary Hypothesis regards the authorship of the Pentateuch particularly.
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The first five books of the Bible.
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As conservative Christians, and I call myself a conservative in the sense that I believe...
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Some might call me a fundamentalist.
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But I would maybe prefer just the term biblical Christian.
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Or maybe conservative.
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One who believes in the traditions of the faith.
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That's what conservative means.
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It means to conserve tradition.
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And so, as opposed to liberal, which means to be free from tradition or to be loosed.
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And so, when we consider the traditional conservative interpretation of the authorship of the Pentateuch, the author is Moses.
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Okay? So, when we say the Pentateuch, the Torah, it's the books of Moses.
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That's another way of saying it.
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And that's the traditional understanding of the authorship.
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However, the Documentary Hypothesis proposes that Genesis through Deuteronomy was not written by Moses, but instead was written by four different groups of people.
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Not even one other person.
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As if it wasn't written by Moses, but it was written by some later person.
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No, it proposes the idea that Genesis through Deuteronomy is written by four different...
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Essentially four different committees.
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Four different groups that have had their hand in the writing of the Pentateuch.
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And the Documentary Hypothesis proposes that it was not completed during the Exodus.
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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.
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That's when it would have been written.
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Because certainly Moses would not have written it in the first 40 years of his life when he was in Egypt.
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He certainly probably would not have written it in the second 40 years of his life.
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But he would have written it during the time of his leading the people of God.
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So if you go through Numbers particularly, you'll see it's almost as if it's a daily account of what's happening.
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And so this is being written and what's being written.
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And I'm not saying he never would use a scribe or an amanuensis, someone who would write for him.
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I'm not saying that there was never a time that he dictated.
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And I'm also not saying that every single word was written by him.
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Because I do believe the ending of Deuteronomy would have had to have been written by someone else.
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Because it tells of Moses' death.
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And so in that regard, I'm not saying every single word.
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But the traditional understanding is that Moses wrote it.
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The documentary hypothesis comes along and says, No, there are at least four different groups.
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You have the J-E-P-D.
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And I'll write that down.
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J-E-P-D.
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And the J-E-P-D stands for...
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First, well, the J is what we might refer to as the Jehovah's, but would actually be pronounced the Yahweh's.
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And that is the...
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I'll write that, Yahweh's.
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The Yahweh's, there should be an H in there, I'm sorry, Y-A-H-W-I-S-T.
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Y-A-H-W-I-S-T.
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That would be whenever we see the name Yahweh.
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And they would say, when you see the name Yahweh, you know we're dealing with the Yahwist group.
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Because that's what they called God.
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Okay? And the E stands for the Elohist.
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And the Elohist is the Hebrew word Elohim.
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And so they would say that the second group...
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Anytime you see Elohim, that's what they called God.
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And so you can make a distinction.
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Right away, there's a problem, though.
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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.
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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.
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The phrase, it doesn't use one or the other, it uses both.
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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.
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Elohim refers to God's nature.
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And Yahweh refers to God's name.
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Elohim is what God is.
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Yahweh is who God is.
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So when we call Him Yahweh Elohim, we are saying He is Lord God.
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Or He is Yahweh God.
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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...
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Okay, nobody? All right.
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I saw a smile over there.
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I think, you know, Jason Priestly was a very...
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had a very small window of success in the 90s.
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90210, yes, thank you.
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And then the D stands for the Deuteronomic.
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The Deuteronomic, which is basically like writing Deuteronomy, but instead of Deuteronomy, it's Deuteronomic.
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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.
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So you see now what the documentary hypothesis is proposing.
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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.
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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.
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I mean, that's much, much later than the traditional dating of 1400 BC, the time of Moses.
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A thousand years of distinction.
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So, Dr.
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Unger says this about the documentary hypothesis.
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He says, if it were true, the Pentateuch would be inauthentic, unhistoric, and unreliable.
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A fabrication of men, not a work of God.
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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.
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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.
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How many of you have ever heard the name Jordan Peterson? Jordan Peterson is a social commentator.
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He is a psychologist.
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He's said some really smart things.
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I don't want to say that he hasn't made some worthwhile contributions to the world in the fact of what 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.
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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.
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As if there's no question.
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Well, this is why they said that, and this is why they said that.
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And it's accepted as if it were not contestable.
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Well, it is contestable.
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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.
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Four reasons why I don't accept the documentary hypothesis.
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Four reasons why I can't talk.
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No, four reasons why I don't accept the documentary hypothesis.
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Number one, there is no manuscript evidence to support any type of editorial work that it suggests and must have included.
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Think about what it would take, especially if the books of Moses were not around until the 5th century.
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Think about what it would take.
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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.
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What is he referring to, if not the books of Moses? There is no manuscript evidence to support this claim.
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Number two, there is wide disagreement among those who hold this theory about where the divisions should be.
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There is no agreement among those who hold it as to who wrote which part.
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It's just a theory that it must have had multiple authors because, well, we say so.
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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.
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Number three, there is archaeological support for the writings, customs, and religious knowledge that the books contain as being ancient.
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I know these are long points, they're not easy points.
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Let me say that again.
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There is archaeological support for the writings, customs, and religious knowledge as being ancient.
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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.
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The fourth one is the one that convinces me the most, and the one that I really am most, as far as evidentially.
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There is an internal unity and coherence that does not support a cut-and-paste origin.
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There is an internal coherence and unity that does not support a cut-and-paste origin.
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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.
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And so, if there were a question, I would consult John 5, verses 45 to 47.
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I want you to listen to what Jesus says.
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Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father.
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There is one who accuses you, Moses, on whom you have set your hope.
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For if you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote of me.
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So, right there from the mouth of Jesus.
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Now, certainly he doesn't say, Moses wrote Genesis through Deuteronomy.
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They didn't even call it Genesis through Deuteronomy at that time.
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But what he does say is something implicit that's important.
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He says, Moses condemns you.
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What condemns them? The law.
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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.
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BJ, you had your hand up, buddy.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Because that's just such a powerful thought.
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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.
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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.
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So, let's turn our attention now to Genesis.
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I'm just going to take a sip here before we move on.
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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.
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I've been doing that since September of last year.
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I am preaching chapter 2, verse 7 this Sunday.
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So, it's taken a little bit of time to get to where we are.
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So, for me to condense Genesis into the next 15 minutes or so is going to hurt a lot.
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But you notice I started tonight right off the bat.
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I just welcomed you, because there's so much.
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I didn't want to speed through this.
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So, let's begin by talking about Genesis.
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The book of Genesis is the first book of the Pentateuch, and the word Genesis is a Greek term, and it means beginnings.
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It means beginnings.
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In Hebrew, the name of the book is Bereshith, and the word Bereshith means in the beginning.
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It's the very first words of the Hebrew Bible.
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Bereshith is in the beginning, and so that's what they call Genesis.
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We would call it Genesis.
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The word Genesis has this word in it, which we should all be familiar with, the word gene.
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You think about your genes as where you're from, your origin, your genes.
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So, that word in Greek, gene, in the Greek, means the beginning of something, or the root, or the source of something.
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So, Genesis is the source.
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It's the beginning.
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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.
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Because when you're interpreting a book, it's essential that you know what type of literature you're interpreting.
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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.
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And so, many people believe that Genesis falls into the category of mythology.
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And, obviously, I don't.
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But, remember, when you think about the world, and you think about, I mean, there's almost 8 billion people now in the world.
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And, according to most statistical analysis, somewhere around 2 billion of those people would identify as Christians.
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Most of them are Roman Catholic.
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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.
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But, still, even within Christianity, there are people who would look at Genesis and say, A garden? A guy? 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.
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So, you understand the attitude of mythology.
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Run over to Numbers and there's a donkey who talks.
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You ever wonder where they got the idea for Shrek? That's a flying talking donkey.
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I know.
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Why do you beat me? I'll give you a quick, quick anecdote.
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I had to preach for my homiletics class when I was in seminary, and I preached that passage.
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I love Numbers, and I love that narrative.
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And so, it's just funny to think about that story.
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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.
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Everybody's, Oh, we need the Bible taught in school.
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No, we don't, because it will be taught as mythology at best, even to the point it could be taught as hate literature.
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I mean, 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.
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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.
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So, I don't support reading or teaching the Bible in schools in the way that most people do.
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Everybody gets excited, Oh, you know, we're going to see the Bible taught in school.
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Slow down.
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If you want the Bible taught to your children, teach the Bible to your children.
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It's your job.
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Now I'm getting a little off track.
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But that's your mom and dad, if you are.
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It's your job.
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Teach your kids the Scripture.
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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.
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A woman turns to salt.
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Remember that? Lot's wife.
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Remember Lot's wife.
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That was one of Billy Graham's most famous sermons.
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It was entitled, Remember Lot's Wife.
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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.
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And the reason why I believe that it is historical narrative is because it is written in the form of the historical narrative.
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For instance, one of the things that we find in the book of Genesis ten times is genealogies.
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And we do not typically find genealogies in mythology.
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Genealogies are intended to take people back in history to a particular point in time and a particular people.
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And therefore, the inclusion of genealogies in Genesis would lead us to believe that it's written in the form of the historic narrative.
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Genesis is broken into two primary divisions.
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The first division is in chapter 1 to 11.
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We call that primitive history.
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Chapters 12 through 50 is patriarchal history.
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Or patriarchal history.
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We have the first...
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Yes, sir? 1 through 11 is primitive history.
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The first 11 chapters of Genesis tell us about the creation of man.
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The second section, chapter 12 through 50, tell us about the creation of the nation of Israel.
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One of the phrases that you see in Genesis over and over and over ten times is the phrase Toledot.
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Toledot means in the generations of.
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And we see this in chapter 2.
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We see this in chapter 5.
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We see this throughout Genesis in the generations of.
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And it always precedes a list of names.
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The generation of this person, you have these people following.
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And those are the marking posts of Genesis.
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Because it's telling a story.
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It's telling a story first of the creation of man, then the creation of the nation of Israel.
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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.
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And it is not a textbook.
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It's not a science textbook like you would have in school.
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Now having said that, I'm not saying it's unscientific.
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But it doesn't use the same language that we would use today.
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Genesis uses something called phenomenological language.
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Phenomenological language simply means the language of appearance.
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A phenomenon, it's something that you see.
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It's something that appears.
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So phenomenological is the language of appearance.
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So, what time did the sun rise this morning? 6.30? But did it really? No, that's not what I meant.
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What I mean is when we say the sun rises, that is phenomenological language.
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Because the sun is not what's moving.
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Well, it is moving, but it's not moving in the sense of what we see.
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We see the sun come up.
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We see the sun make a circuit in the sky.
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We see the sun go down.
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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.
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Because that's what we see.
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That's called the language of appearance.
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It's not actually what's happening.
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What's happening is we're turning in a direction and what we see as the sun moving is actually us moving.
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Unless, of course, you're a flat earth person.
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If you're a flat earth person, then the sun is moving.
35:05
But that's a conversation for another time.
35:08
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.
35:28
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.
35:38
Because why would we be so foolish as to think that that's what he meant? What's that? Okay, now you...
35:49
You understand the point.
35:51
When we come into the scripture, we see the use of phenomenological languages in certain things.
35:58
And so we have to understand that not everything is intended to be understood as scientific.
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But neither is it being deceptive.
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It's giving the language of appearance.
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This is what was seen.
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This is what would have been seen.
36:17
Genesis also makes claims that science cannot account for.
36:22
Science cannot account for the supernatural.
36:26
Why? Because science is the study of the natural.
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Therefore it cannot account for the supernatural.
36:38
Science is by its very nature anti-supernatural because it's not attempting to explain the supernatural.
36:45
What do they call things in science that they can't explain? An act of God.
36:54
Right? We don't know what that was.
36:55
It was an act of God.
36:57
Somebody's sick.
36:58
They're dying.
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The medicine has not helped them.
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And miraculously they are healed.
37:04
They say it must have been divine intervention.
37:07
It must have been an act of God.
37:09
Right? Because there's no explanation scientifically for why this person who was riddled with cancer is now completely cancer-free.
37:18
Right? We know it doesn't happen a lot, but we know that it has happened.
37:23
And therefore there are things that are not understood scientifically.
37:28
And think about Genesis.
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God created the world out of nothing.
37:39
Right away that's unscientific.
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Because you can't get something from nothing.
37:46
It's impossible.
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It's the rule of ex nihilo nihil fit.
37:50
It means out of nothing, nothing comes.
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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.
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But the Bible says God created all things, ex nihilo, out of nothing.
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He spoke and it was.
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That's a miracle.
38:10
Creation itself is a miracle.
38:13
And therefore science cannot account for miracle.
38:16
It's not supposed to.
38:18
It's not its purpose.
38:20
Science is in the realm of the natural.
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And it's limited to the realm of the natural.
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So when we're dealing with, for instance, when we get to Exodus, the water stands as a heap on both sides.
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Guess what water doesn't do? Stand up.
38:34
Water don't stand up.
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If I pour water out right here, it will never stand up.
38:41
It'll flood.
38:42
It will disperse.
38:44
It will spread.
38:45
And it will fall into the cracks.
38:47
And it will soak the floor.
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But it will never get one inch high off the ground unless there's something to hold it up.
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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.
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Stood as a heap.
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Water doesn't do that.
39:09
So what do the scientists come in and say? Couldn't have happened.
39:12
It's unscientific.
39:13
Well, we're not dealing with science.
39:16
We're not dealing with the natural.
39:17
We're dealing with the supernatural.
39:20
See, the problem with most scientists is the presupposition of anti-supernaturalism.
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That was the title of my master's thesis.
39:28
It was the presupposition of anti-supernaturalism.
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I was trying to be fancy and use a big name.
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But it really was.
39:34
The point of the thesis was the problem with modern science is the presupposition that there is nothing outside the natural.
39:46
And that's where science is limited to.
39:48
And I appreciate that.
39:50
Scientists cannot study the supernatural.
39:53
And that's okay.
39:54
But they deny it because they can't study it.
39:58
That's not okay.
40:02
Okay, I've gotten, again, I see these little rabbit trails I end up down.
40:05
But the point is, Genesis is not unscientific.
40:08
But it deals with things that science cannot quantify.
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Specifically, miracles and supernatural events.
40:14
And we can say that for Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy too.
40:18
Particularly, the talking donkey.
40:19
That's something that science cannot answer.
40:21
God spoke through the donkey.
40:24
Okay, it's not as if the donkey learned how to speak.
40:29
That's not the point.
40:31
It's not as if that one donkey was born with vocal cords.
40:35
That's not the point.
40:44
Something to consider.
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When it comes to creation, Genesis is primarily concerned with the who and the why.
40:54
More than the how and the when.
40:58
Let me say that again.
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Genesis is primarily concerned with the who, God.
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And the why, His glory.
41:07
Then the how, how it all went.
41:10
And the when.
41:12
But what do we almost always argue about? The how and the when.
41:15
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.
41:29
Now, I'm not saying we can't have an opinion.
41:32
I have an opinion.
41:33
I tend to be a young earth creationist.
41:37
Meaning, I don't think the earth is as old as science.
41:41
Because, again, science is limited to the natural and has to study the natural.
41:44
And because they are limited, I think they've gotten that wrong.
41:49
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.
41:55
I think Hugh Ross is a brother in Christ.
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And he is a scientist who believes in an old earth creation model.
42:03
I don't write him out of the kingdom.
42:05
I just disagree.
42:06
I've read his books.
42:07
I've had an opportunity to hear him teach.
42:10
I think he's very brilliant.
42:12
And I'm glad he's on our side, in one sense.
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I'm glad he's a believer.
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But I don't have to agree with everything that he says.
42:19
I don't agree with everything Ken Ham says.
42:23
But you understand the point.
42:25
The Bible's focus is on God and why he's doing what he's doing.
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He's doing what he's doing to glorify himself.
42:33
The whole Bible is written to one end.
42:36
The glory of God.
42:37
You exist for one purpose.
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The glory of God.
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And you will glorify God no matter what.
42:44
Because you will either glorify God as an object of his mercy, or you will glorify God as an object of his divine justice.
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That's it.
42:55
In the end, you will glorify God.
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Because that is the very reason for which you were created.
43:03
You weren't created to be happy.
43:08
I'm not saying it's wrong to be happy.
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But everybody thinks the goal of life is happiness.
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If anything, the goal of life is holiness.
43:18
Not happiness.
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Because the goal of life is to glorify God.
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And how better to glorify the holy God than to be holy as he is holy.
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People always say, I don't know.
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I just know God wants me to be happy.
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So I'm going to do this sin.
43:36
Slow down.
43:38
Are you really sure? I'm certain.
43:41
I'm certain.
43:41
That's a dangerous certainty.
43:52
Write this verse down.
43:53
Matthew 19, 3-9.
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Matthew 19, 3-9.
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Jesus quotes Genesis chapter 1 and 2.
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I talked about this Sunday in my last sermon.
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Jesus quotes Genesis 1 and 2 when he's asked about the subject of marriage and divorce.
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Jesus said, From the beginning, Moses wrote.
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From the beginning, God created them, male and female.
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And for this reason, a man should leave his father and mother, and the two shall become one flesh.
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He quotes from Genesis 1.27 and Genesis 2.24.
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He quotes two verses.
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By the way, the documentary hypothesis people, they would say a different person wrote chapter 1 than wrote chapter 2.
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Jesus quotes from both and says both were written by Moses.
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In Matthew 19.
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So we have every reason to believe Moses wrote it.
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And we have every reason to believe that it's true.
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Because Jesus says it's true.
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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.
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Now, we've spent a lot of time in Genesis, and I know we have four other books to get to, but understand this.
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So much of the next four books rest upon what we have in Genesis.
45:24
I want to say just a couple more things, and then we'll move on.
45:27
What is the theme of Genesis? Genesis begins with the grand narrative that encapsulates three major points.
45:37
Creation, Fall, Redemption.
45:41
That is the major theme of the book.
45:43
Creation, Fall, and Redemption.
45:46
And how does Genesis deal with redemption? It's the calling out of a peculiar people, Israel, from the descendants of Abraham.
45:52
That's the redemption line.
45:56
The redemption through the promise given by God to Abraham in Genesis 12.
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We have the very first covenant God made with Abraham in Genesis 12.
46:09
So we have Creation, Fall, Redemption.
46:11
That's the grand metanarrative of the whole Bible, but in small form, it's the metanarrative of Genesis.
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And we see this grand metanarrative come to life as God creates man.
46:28
Man rejects God's authority.
46:30
God judges man.
46:31
But then He gives him grace.
46:34
God comes to him in the garden.
46:35
He clothes his nakedness.
46:39
Then we see the flood come, and God provides a Savior in the ark through Noah, saving mankind, not all mankind, but saving mankind from utter destruction.
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Then we see God choosing Abraham, giving a covenant to Abraham, and then within that covenant promise is the promise of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.
46:59
Paul would later say in the book of Galatians, when God promised Abraham a seed, He wasn't talking about the whole nation.
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He was talking about Jesus, and that's why Paul points to the fact that seed is singular.
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The seed of Abraham is not the whole nation of Israel.
47:15
The seed of Abraham is Christ.
47:19
That is in Galatians, and very important theology, because Christ is the promise given to Abraham.
47:26
And Paul says this.
47:27
He says, The gospel was preached to Abraham when God said to Abraham, Through you all the nations of the world will be blessed.
47:34
How is it that through Abraham all nations will be blessed? Because of Christ.
47:39
Because in Christ there are believers from every tribe, tongue, and nation.
47:51
Keep this in mind always when you're studying Genesis.
47:53
What begins in Genesis is fulfilled in Christ.
47:58
As John Calvin said, What we lost in Adam, we have in Christ.
48:05
That's right.
48:06
He is called the second Adam, or the last Adam.
48:10
All right.
48:14
I'm going to quickly move on now.
48:16
As we stated, Genesis sits at the head of a five book...
48:19
Did you have a question, or were you just...
48:20
Okay.
48:22
Genesis sits at the head of a five book set.
48:25
Altogether, these five books make up the Torah, or the law.
48:29
I believe they're all written by Moses, as I've said.
48:31
And these books establish the foundation of human history and Hebrew history.
48:36
These books are the foundation of human history and Hebrew history.
48:41
And they're all written during the time of the Exodus.
48:43
If you have your book, or the handout that I gave you, Miss Pat would have given it to you on your way in.
48:48
I want you to pull out page 88 in your book, and page 89.
48:59
You can just set them beside each other.
49:01
I know it's a little hard without the tables.
49:10
If you have it in the book, you have a nice color version.
49:12
If you have the handout, it's black and white, but you can still see it.
49:23
On page 88, you see the Exodus journeys of the children of Israel from Egypt to Canaan.
49:30
It begins at the top left, and it begins...
49:34
Each one is numbered, and you can follow those numbers down.
49:36
We're not going to do this in class because of time.
49:38
I'm giving you the handout for you to use on your own, and for your own study.
49:42
And honestly, the study of the Exodus is very interesting.
49:48
To me, it's amazing to watch as God is so gracious in leading His people out of slavery.
49:56
And what do they immediately do? Rebel.
49:59
Almost as soon as they're given the opportunity.
50:02
Moses goes up on top of the mountain.
50:04
What do they do? They take their gold, and they melt it down.
50:07
They make a calf.
50:07
And what do they say about the calf? This is the God who led you out of slavery.
50:12
This is the God who parted the sea.
50:16
No, it ain't.
50:17
You just made that God.
50:20
Yeah, exactly.
50:21
Your earring is now endowed with the divinity.
50:24
It's so...
50:25
But how quickly are we willing to make idols? To change God's truth for something that we want it to be.
50:36
Oftentimes, I think about the people of Israel, and I think how much I, myself, fail.
50:47
And I can't, for the life of me, grief them very much because of my own failures.
50:58
But that doesn't mean they're right.
50:59
It just means I'm that much more wrong.
51:02
So, we see the wanderings here.
51:04
You'll notice...
51:05
I want to point out one thing to you on the map.
51:08
If you follow with your finger down from Ramses to Succoth and down over through the Red Sea.
51:14
And again, this is a general map.
51:16
We don't know exactly where the crossing was.
51:18
And you go all the way down and back up.
51:22
If you follow it back up to where it says Kadesh Barnea.
51:26
You see that? That is important historically.
51:29
That is where the wandering really begins.
51:33
And you see how much there's turns and twists and backs and forths at that point.
51:38
That is an important historical place.
51:43
And so, I would encourage you looking that up and learning some more about Kadesh Barnea.
51:49
And then, of course, you can follow all the way to when they finally crossed over the Jordan and entered into the Promised Land.
51:58
Well, it wasn't them.
51:59
Who was it? It was the next generation.
52:03
The generation that went into the wilderness is not the generation that came out.
52:07
Which is a testimony to God's justice.
52:13
He judged them in the wilderness for their lack of fidelity to Him.
52:19
Now, if you go to the page 89, you'll see this is a timeline of the Exodus.
52:24
Starting with Joseph, who was responsible, of course, for the people of Israel coming into Egypt.
52:31
He himself had been sold into slavery.
52:34
And we know that narrative fairly well.
52:36
And then you have the birth of Moses, the parting of the Red Sea, the situation at Sinai, Moses' death, Israel and Egypt.
52:44
Or rather, I'm going across the top line.
52:46
The bottom line, I was off.
52:49
So, we have Israel and Egypt, ten plagues, Joseph's bones, the spies report.
52:53
That's an important narrative.
52:54
If you're unfamiliar with it, I would encourage you to look that up and read about it.
52:59
Because remember, the spies go into the land and they're afraid that they can't conquer the land.
53:12
They come back, we are like grasshoppers in their sight.
53:18
They're giants! And we are like grasshoppers.
53:22
One of my professors had a sermon he loved to preach, and it was entitled, Giants, Grasshoppers, and God.
53:29
Who do you see when you go into the promised land? Do you see what you can't accomplish because of the giants? Do you see yourself as the grasshopper? Or do you see the God who is able to do anything? What is your focus? Is it on your problem, yourself, or on God? Not the deepest sermon in the world, but pretty helpful if you think about what we learn from this narrative.
53:58
And so, it goes on, the key people at the bottom, Moses, Aaron, Pharaoh, Miriam, who was the sister of Moses and Aaron, and of course, Joshua, who didn't have any parents.
54:09
He's called the son of none.
54:11
Oh, come on.
54:13
That's a dad joke.
54:14
That's a good one.
54:14
All right.
54:16
So, that's for you.
54:18
Take that.
54:19
Look at it.
54:20
Hopefully, that will help you.
54:21
But remember, all of the next four books we're going to mention, written in this time period.
54:26
That's why I'm pointing this out.
54:29
This is all happening in this 40-year period.
54:34
So, we have Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
54:39
Exodus is God leading His people out of slavery, giving them His law.
54:45
The great theme of the Exodus is redemption.
54:50
God redeeming His people from slavery.
54:54
The key events of Exodus are, of course, the plagues, the Passover, the crossing of the Red Sea, the giving of the Ten Commandments, the creation.
55:07
You don't have to write all these down if you don't want to, but I'm just calling to your remembrance.
55:10
Think about all that's in Exodus.
55:12
The golden calf incident and the creation of the Ark of the Covenant.
55:16
All that's in the book of Exodus.
55:19
I know sometimes it can be hard to read long-flowing narratives, but these are exciting truths and important foundational truths.
55:27
So, the book of Exodus is about redemption.
55:30
The book of Leviticus is about holiness.
55:36
God gives regulations for holiness to His people.
55:41
Remember what I said to you last week? At the end of this course, my hope is that you would be able to give a one-sentence synopsis of every book of the Old Testament.
55:51
So, think about what I'm giving you right now.
55:53
Exodus is about God leading His people, redeeming His people out of slavery.
55:59
Leviticus is God giving His people regulations for holiness.
56:23
Yeah, and the Shekinah glory, the Shekinah, a lot of people call it.
56:28
Yeah, we don't see that after the creation of the temple.
56:31
We don't see that, the glory cloud, because God's abode is created.
56:36
And so, there is a change there in the economy of how God's interacting with the nation.
56:41
Yes, sir? Leviticus is God giving regulations for holiness.
56:48
God is giving the regulations for holiness.
56:50
This is where we get all those food laws and all those laws of the clothing that you're supposed to wear and how you're supposed to cut your beard and all those things.
56:58
All of that is found in Leviticus.
57:01
And Leviticus has also what's known as the holiness code.
57:04
There are certain chapters in Leviticus that are specific to holy living.
57:10
And it refers to things like man should not lay with another man, things like that.
57:15
That's Leviticus 18.
57:17
It's around in that same area what we call the holiness code.
57:19
Things that didn't apply only to Israel, but things that would apply to all nations because these are moral standards that are by nature wrong.
57:34
Numbers is Israel's rebellion in the wilderness.
57:40
Numbers is about Israel's rebellion in the wilderness.
57:46
Why is it called Numbers? Because there is a census taken at the beginning and there is a census taken at the end.
57:56
And it's interesting, it begins with 603,550.
58:01
That's the first count.
58:03
But remember, that count only includes fighting men.
58:08
If you read it again, 603,550 fighting men, which would have been men between the ages of 20 to 40 years old.
58:20
So, if the nation of Israel had 603,550 fighting men, and let's just assume that each one of those fighting men was a married man, then you've already gotten to 1.2 million people.
58:38
600,000 plus 600,000 is 1.2 million.
58:42
Am I right? Because I'm really bad at math.
58:45
And let's assume there are also older generations that wouldn't be counted among the fighting men.
58:51
And children.
58:52
We know there were children because it's the children that make up the next generation that actually go into the promised land.
58:57
So now we're looking at a number that is really astronomical.
59:02
Somewhere in the vicinity of about 2 million people.
59:08
Some scholars think that the numbers are hyperbolic and they're over exaggerated.
59:13
And by the way, every movie you've ever seen about the Exodus didn't have 2 million people in it.
59:19
It was always one line of people.
59:21
Looked like some people coming into Sam's during the COVID thing.
59:24
It was just one long line of people.
59:26
But it was never 2 million people.
59:28
2 million people is twice the size of Jacksonville.
59:33
Jacksonville is about a million people, right? Roughly? What's that? Yeah, yeah.
59:41
Think about how much manna.
59:43
Think about how much real estate it would take for...
59:50
What did you say? A million people? Some people say, well, it's exaggerated numbers or this is wrong.
01:00:00
I don't believe that.
01:00:01
I believe the Bible is true and therefore I have to account for these things.
01:00:05
And one of my professors pointed this out.
01:00:08
And it was really, really kind of dawned on me when he said it.
01:00:11
He said, think of it this way.
01:00:15
Every person in that 603,550 other than Joshua and Caleb, every one of those people died.
01:00:24
No, Moses died in the wilderness.
01:00:25
Well, he died on the mountain looking at the promised land.
01:00:27
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
01:00:28
The only two that made it was Joshua and Caleb.
01:00:32
And so 603,550 plus died.
01:00:36
That would have meant that every single day they were burying bodies for 40 years.
01:00:43
And he gave me the number and I don't remember what the number is.
01:00:46
But you can go home and do the division or subtraction as you will.
01:00:49
But he said every day they would have been having multiple burials of people as they were dying over that 40-year period.
01:00:56
A reminder of their rebellion.
01:01:03
These are things we don't think about when we think about that massive movement.
01:01:08
One of the arguments that archaeologists make is that there's no physical evidence that the Israelites made this trek.
01:01:20
And the large number would be one of the arguments they would use against it.
01:01:24
They would say, well, see, if that many people made that long of a journey over that many years, there would be some evidence left behind.
01:01:32
But the answer to that is actually a fairly simple response, is that this is not a people that is building a city or anything with foundations.
01:01:43
This is a nomadic people that is moving from place to place.
01:01:47
Even the very temple in which they worshipped was not a temple but a tabernacle.
01:01:51
The word tabernacle means a tent.
01:01:52
Everything they had was intended to move with them.
01:01:57
So the idea that they left behind 2,000 years later, actually 3,500 years later, no archaeological evidence to suggest that they actually were there.
01:02:10
Think about how much archaeological evidence would not be there if they're a nomadic people that are constantly moving.
01:02:18
There's really no reason to use that as an argument against the Exodus.
01:02:23
But it is one of the arguments you'll hear, especially if you watch the History Channel.
01:02:26
They'll say, oh, there's no archaeological evidence.
01:02:28
What would there be? And how would you prove? There are some evidences that they were in Egypt.
01:02:39
There's some evidences from some very ancient literature and ancient statues and things that would indicate them being in Egypt.
01:02:46
But all of that is archaeology is not my primary field.
01:02:50
But having looked into a lot of it, I have no reason to deny or to not accept that this journey was true.
01:02:58
And it was a whole lot of people, well over a million people.
01:03:03
So this takes us to Deuteronomy.
01:03:05
What is Deuteronomy? Deuteronomy is the second giving of the law.
01:03:11
That is literally what Deuteronomy means.
01:03:13
Namas is the word law.
01:03:15
Deutero means second or two.
01:03:20
Deuteronomy is second law or second giving of the law.
01:03:24
And it's actually basically a listing of sermons.
01:03:31
It's a set of sermonic statements.
01:03:35
And if you read Deuteronomy, it takes you all the way back to the history of the people, back to the Exodus and walks you through it all and gives you the law again.
01:03:43
And in Deuteronomy 5, we're given the Ten Commandments again.
01:03:46
And so we go through it and it's just going through it again for a new generation.
01:03:54
But also, Deuteronomy has something else that is hugely important theologically.
01:04:01
Deuteronomy gives us what's known as the Shema.
01:04:04
Spelled S-H-E-M-A.
01:04:06
S-H-E-M-A.
01:04:09
The Shema, or pronounced just Shema, is the prayer of Israel that identifies them as monotheistic.
01:04:21
Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God, the Lord is one.
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And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and all your soul and all your strength.
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That is the prayer of Deuteronomy 6.
01:04:37
And what does it say in Deuteronomy 6? And you shall teach this to your children.
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And you shall write it on your doorposts and on phylacteries on your forehead.
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You shall have this Word of God.
01:04:49
This Word, what? That He is one.
01:04:51
The major theological truth that begins all the way back in Genesis 1-1 is that there is one God.
01:04:59
In the beginning, one God created the heavens and the earth.
01:05:05
In fact, under theological insights, that's a major theological insight.
01:05:12
There are three major monotheistic religions in the world.
01:05:21
Judaism is the oldest.
01:05:26
Islam is the newest.
01:05:31
Christianity is the right one.
01:05:35
I mean, what else could I say? No, let me give you a point of this, though.
01:05:41
One of the things I wrote about, I went to seminary, but I also have a degree in social science.
01:05:49
I did a lot of studying in peoples and behaviors and why people behave the way they behave.
01:05:54
And social science is sort of a catch-all degree.
01:05:58
But I did spend a lot of time studying behavioral patterns and things like that.
01:06:02
And one of the things that I remember writing on in school was on the subject of, do Christians, Jews, and Muslims worship the same God? Before you answer, allow me to say what I want to say.
01:06:21
Christians, Jews, and Muslims do not worship the same God because Christians believe in Trinity and Muslims and Jews believe in Unitarianism.
01:06:35
We are Trinitarian, they are Unitarian, so that is a major theological distinction.
01:06:40
And that is what distinguishes the three monotheistic faiths, is Trinitarian religion versus Unitarian religion.
01:06:45
But all three religions, this is what my paper was about, all three religions say they are worshiping the God of Abraham.
01:06:56
So do all three worship the same God? No, because He is a different God.
01:07:00
The God of the Christians is the Father of Jesus Christ.
01:07:03
The Jews would say that is not true.
01:07:05
Muslims would say that is not true.
01:07:07
Understand? So it is not the same God in that respect.
01:07:10
But they all three would argue they are worshiping the God of Abraham.
01:07:15
See, Muslims believe that instead of Isaac being the chosen son of Abraham, it was Ishmael who was the chosen son of Abraham.
01:07:27
And the daughter of Hagar, or the son of Hagar, was the one through whom the promise came.
01:07:33
And so there is a long history of distinction.
01:07:37
But the point I am making is simply this.
01:07:41
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, all in Deuteronomy, all have this one underlying theological theme that ties everything together, and that is God is one.
01:07:53
God is one.
01:07:54
And whether you are a Jew, Christian, or a Muslim, that is at least the one thing that is agreed upon.
01:08:01
Now how the oneness of God works, that is when you get into Trinitarianism and Unitarianism, and that is a conversation when we get to New Testament survey.
01:08:07
But for now, the understanding of the monotheistic religion, there is no question that Genesis through Deuteronomy relies on the foundation of monotheism.
01:08:18
We have gone past our time for our break.
01:08:22
I want to, I would like to just finish.
01:08:25
Is anybody just desperate for a break? Huh? Push the gas and go.
01:08:34
Because if anybody has got to run to the restroom, now would be the time.
01:08:39
But I am just going to keep going.
01:08:41
You can still hear me out there.
01:08:42
There is a mic the speakers carry.
01:08:45
Because I have two last things that I want to deal with, and I know I am going to need the next 15 minutes, and that is how much time we have left.
01:08:51
So if I give you a break, we might as well just leave.
01:08:55
So let me give you these last two things to consider.
01:08:59
One is the theological insights, and I have just given you the most important one, and that is monotheism.
01:09:03
That is the first and most important theological insight that we draw from Genesis through Deuteronomy.
01:09:08
There is only one God.
01:09:10
That is the first.
01:09:12
So we are going to look at theological insights, and we are going to look at interpretive challenges.
01:09:16
That is how we are going to end tonight.
01:09:19
Theological insights, number one, God is one.
01:09:22
That is monotheism.
01:09:24
Number two, God is creator.
01:09:29
Number three, God is righteous.
01:09:38
Number four, God chooses to enter into covenant relationships with men.
01:09:52
That is an important theological concept that we see from the very earliest parts of the Bible.
01:10:00
What is the first covenant that is mentioned in Scripture? No, that is the first time we infer that from the text, but there is not a covenant mentioned there? Yeah, the Noahic covenant.
01:10:15
That is the first one that is specifically mentioned.
01:10:17
God is in covenant with Noah regarding what happened in regard to the flood.
01:10:26
Exactly, and that was the next point I was going to make.
01:10:31
You could make an argument that the covenant that God made with Adam was referring to not eating of the tree.
01:10:38
That was a command that had a definite punishment that went along with it, and so that was essentially a form of a covenant of works, if you will, if you take that and use that language.
01:10:48
But the first mentioned covenant is Noah.
01:10:52
But we know that through that it teaches us something about how God operates.
01:10:56
God operates with man through covenant or contractual promise.
01:11:00
That is what a covenant is, it is a contract.
01:11:03
God makes a promise and he uses himself as the guarantor.
01:11:07
Remember when God made the promise to Abraham? He had Abraham cut the animals up and separate them, and then God passed through the center of it in the smoking fire pot.
01:11:17
And why did God pass through the middle of it? Because that was how contracts in the ancient world were signed.
01:11:25
You had an animal cut the animal in half, both people walked through the middle of the animal, and what it was saying was if either one of us break this contract, may it be done to us as it has been done to this animal.
01:11:36
We're walking through this as to give a promise, so much so to the point of death.
01:11:43
But remember when God made his promise to Abraham, Abraham didn't walk through, just God.
01:11:50
Because he didn't need Abraham's involvement, because it was based on promise, not on Abraham's participation.
01:11:59
Huh? Oh, yeah, yeah, I was not familiar with it, you kind of threw me off guard, yes.
01:12:14
I'm not sure, but yes, the cutting of the animal in half, that was a particular thing done in the ancient world, and you're calling it Caesarean? Or Caesarean? I had to look that, I don't know if I'm familiar with that, I may have heard it before, but it's not ringing a bell.
01:12:31
But that's, God shows in Genesis through Deuteronomy how he, think about what God did at Sinai, that's a covenant.
01:12:39
The Bible says the people of Israel were given the Sabbath as a sign of the covenant.
01:12:43
The Ten Commandments are the commands of the covenant.
01:12:48
So we have this covenant relationship that God has, and that's the way he relates to us.
01:12:55
We are members of what? The new covenant.
01:12:58
Jesus said, this is the new covenant in my blood, and why are we sons and daughters of Abraham? Because we have been adopted into the family of God through our union with Jesus Christ, the true seed of Abraham.
01:13:10
We are in Christ, and Christ is the true son of Abraham.
01:13:15
So we are now made sons and daughters of Abraham by covenant.
01:13:20
Okay, so that is a huge theological insight in those books.
01:13:29
Another theological insight is the concept of atonement.
01:13:33
God providing sacrifice to give his people a way to come back to him when they have sinned.
01:13:41
He gives them a way to atone for their sins through sacrifice.
01:13:44
The sacrifice, of course, would point to the greater sacrifice, which is that of Christ.
01:13:51
So those are five theological insights.
01:13:55
You could also say, you could give a number six.
01:13:57
You could say the concept of election is certainly there.
01:14:01
Not that I'm just trying to squeeze in a little Calvinism here at the end, but certainly election is God chose Noah, God chose Abraham, God chose Isaac, God chose Jacob, not Esau, the twins.
01:14:17
And what does Romans 9 say? To demonstrate his purpose of election.
01:14:22
So the concept of election and that theological insight is certainly there.
01:14:27
We could go through a hundred more, but those are very important foundational.
01:14:32
Certainly God is one, God is greater, God is righteous.
01:14:35
All those things foundationally in this book.
01:14:38
Interpretive challenges, and we'll finalize with these.
01:14:42
There are several passages in the Pentateuch which are difficult to understand and which have created some difficulty among believing scholars, even among conservative believing scholars.
01:14:58
And I want to give you just a few to consider.
01:15:01
I'm not seeking to answer, I'm just giving you the interpretive challenges.
01:15:05
Again, part of this class is to encourage you to study.
01:15:08
So one is the length of the creation days.
01:15:11
That's a debate.
01:15:14
And some people say there is no debate.
01:15:15
Certainly it's 24 hours.
01:15:17
And then people say, well, there is no debate.
01:15:18
Certainly it couldn't be 24 hours.
01:15:19
Well, right there's the debate.
01:15:21
You got two sides both saying completely opposite things and saying there's no debate.
01:15:29
The size and scope of Noah's flood.
01:15:34
The size and scope of Noah's flood.
01:15:37
I will give you this as a thought.
01:15:41
If you believe in old earth creationism, which is the belief that the earth is somewhere around four and a half billion years old, you almost cannot believe in the worldwide flood.
01:16:00
Because the two, and I'll tell you, men like Hugh Ross, who is an old earth creationist, he will say there's no possibility of the worldwide flood.
01:16:11
He believes it was a local event.
01:16:15
So that's why I have an issue.
01:16:18
That's why I find my biggest issue with old earth creationism is because of the denial of the global flood.
01:16:25
If you have a global flood, then you have one of the reasons for, and here I said I wasn't going to defend anything, but here I go.
01:16:31
You have one of the reasons for part of the earth's toposphere, part of the geography of the world looking the way that it does, because the world has been marred by God's judgment in water.
01:16:46
So things like the Grand Canyon wouldn't be something that was created over thousands and hundreds of thousands of years, but rather in a very short amount of time.
01:16:57
The difference is do you have a little bit of water over a long period of time or a whole lot of water in a very short amount of time? In 1980, Mount St.
01:17:05
Helens erupted.
01:17:07
It was because I was born.
01:17:11
It did happen the same year as I was born.
01:17:13
Mount St.
01:17:14
Helens erupted, and it created a change in the geography of that area that was massive, and if we looked at it today, we would say, if we were taking a naturalistic approach, we would say all of those geographical changes should have taken thousands of years to happen.
01:17:30
Rock layers on top of rock layers and whole valleys created by the movement of lava, whole mountains created by the piling up of molten lava, and all of these happen within a few hours in one day.
01:17:47
It shows you how a catastrophe can change a landscape in an instant.
01:17:58
Uniformitarianism is the geological doctrine that changes to geography take hundreds of thousands and if not millions of years to take place.
01:18:07
The opposite of that is known as catastrophism.
01:18:10
It's the idea that no, geographic change can happen a short amount of time provided there are catastrophes that bring about that change.
01:18:20
So if you're an old earth creationist, you would believe in uniformitarianism, that it takes a long time for changes to take place.
01:18:26
If you were a young earth creationist, you would believe in catastrophism, that the reason why the earth looks as it does is because of small amounts of massive cataclysmic change, the primary one being the flood.
01:18:41
Okay? So that's, the scope of Noah's flood is huge when it comes to the question of the age of the earth.
01:18:49
Number three, the identity of the sons of God in Genesis 6.
01:18:53
It's a huge question that deals with the subject of the Nephilim.
01:18:57
I'll be there one day when I'm preaching through Genesis.
01:18:59
I'm taking so long because I don't want to get there.
01:19:03
The identity of Melchizedek.
01:19:06
Melchizedek, was he a pre-incarnate Christ or is he simply a Christ figure? That's a big question that people have.
01:19:14
The appearance of God to people, what we call theophanies.
01:19:20
A theophany is a appearance of God.
01:19:25
The Bible says in Genesis that God ate with Abraham under the trees at Mamre.
01:19:33
Remember that? It said three persons came and one of them was the Lord.
01:19:39
How do we interpret that when we get to the Gospel of John, where the Gospel of John says no one has seen the Father? My interpretation is simple.
01:19:48
I believe that it was a pre-incarnate visitation of Christ.
01:19:51
Therefore, I would say it's not a theophany, but a Christophany.
01:19:55
Because the Bible says no one has seen the Father.
01:19:58
The Son is the one who reveals the Father.
01:20:01
The Son is the one who is the one who is seen.
01:20:05
And so I would say it's the Son.
01:20:06
Yes, sir? Yeah, I think, I don't even think Adam saw the Father in his fullness.
01:20:15
I think he would have seen a pre-incarnate Christ.
01:20:18
Yeah, I would agree with that.
01:20:21
So that is a question, the appearance of theophanies and Christophanies, because they're peppered throughout the five books, whether it's the cloud, the Shekinah cloud, or whether it's, you know, the angel of the Lord, who's mentioned several times.
01:20:37
And any time you see in the Scripture the reference of the angel of the Lord, that's often a distinction different from an angel of the Lord.
01:20:44
When the phrase the angel of the Lord is mentioned, it almost always refers to a divine figure, and I believe it could possibly be referring to Christ as well.
01:20:54
Not that Jesus is an angel, and don't think that I'm saying Jesus is an angel, but it refers to the messenger of Yahweh.
01:20:59
That's what the word angel means, is messenger.
01:21:01
The messenger of Yahweh as a divine figure.
01:21:03
I could show you several passages that would point to that.
01:21:07
I'm not going to die on that hill, but it's one of those things where I would say this could be a theophany, not just an angel.
01:21:15
So the appearance of theophanies and Christophanies are interpretive challenges, things you have to deal with.
01:21:22
The hardening of Pharaoh's heart.
01:21:25
Did God harden his heart, or did he harden his heart? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:21:29
But that's an interpretive question, right? That's one of those challenges that comes up that we would have to deal with.
01:21:34
The plagues of Egypt, the killing of Nadab and Abihu, and the judgments in the wilderness.
01:21:44
This is all one.
01:21:45
Because the question that goes with this one is, was God temperamental? Now, don't get upset with me.
01:21:54
I'm not the one asking the question.
01:21:56
I'm just throwing it out as some people would see.
01:21:58
I mean, they brought strange fire to the Lord, and He set them on fire.
01:22:03
The Bible says the fire came and consumed them.
01:22:08
And He did not apologize.
01:22:11
He said, for those who draw near to Me, I will be regarded as holy.
01:22:18
Leviticus 10, verses 1-3.
01:22:20
Very important passage.
01:22:23
Well, yeah, Ananias and Sapphira.
01:22:25
Same thing, right? You lied to the Holy Spirit.
01:22:31
And that's a good point.
01:22:33
Johnny, you're right.
01:22:34
Because those people who would say, well, the God in the Old Testament was angry, and the God of the New Testament is all love, and puppy dog, and flowers, and all this kind of stuff.
01:22:42
Same God.
01:22:45
But it does take, we have to understand the scope of God's nature.
01:22:50
People say, well, God is love.
01:22:52
Yes, but the Bible doesn't say God is love, love, love.
01:22:55
It says He is holy, holy, holy.
01:22:59
There's only one attribute of God that is ever given the third superlative degree.
01:23:04
In Hebrew, that's very important.
01:23:06
When you said something once, it's important when you say something twice, you're adding emphasis.
01:23:11
Simon, Simon.
01:23:14
You know, when Jesus was talking to Peter.
01:23:19
Verily, verily, I say, because it's important when you repeat something.
01:23:25
But when you repeat it to the third degree, it's referring to the most important thing.
01:23:31
And the only thing God has ever called three times in the Bible is holy, holy, holy.
01:23:44
All right, a couple more and we'll close.
01:23:49
I think this is an interesting interpretive challenge.
01:23:51
I hope it makes sense when I give it to you.
01:23:54
How do we understand the wilderness wanderings? Do we understand the people that died in the wilderness as representing lost people or representing saved people living in defeat? I only throw that out as an interpretive challenge.
01:24:11
I'd like for you to sort of just think about it on your own.
01:24:13
I'm not trying to give you an answer.
01:24:14
But I remember many years ago, the big question was, how do we understand the wilderness? Were they saved and living in defeat? Or were they lost? And is the going into the promised land going to heaven? Or is the going into the promised land a picture of regeneration and salvation? And so it becomes a question of, almost a question of analogy.
01:24:39
What's the analogy? And somebody said, well, maybe there's not an analogy.
01:24:42
Maybe it's just what happened.
01:24:47
But it's an interesting question nonetheless.
01:24:50
How do we understand the people that died in the wilderness? Did they all die lost in their sins and all go to hell? I'm not seeking to give you an answer.
01:25:00
I'm seeking to make you ask the question.
01:25:02
They all died under the judgment of God, did they not? Because they all died having rebelled.
01:25:08
And the very reason for their death in the wilderness was punishment and judgment.
01:25:17
Again, I like to make you think.
01:25:19
And that's one of those difficult answers.
01:25:21
I don't have an answer for certain.
01:25:23
I can tell you what I think.
01:25:25
But I don't want to influence what you think if I don't know with certainty.
01:25:31
Another very important question.
01:25:33
And we're going to draw to the end very quickly.
01:25:39
The distinction is whether the people in the wilderness who died represent lost people or represent saved people who were living a defeated life.
01:25:49
Because I've heard sermons on that.
01:25:51
Are you living in the wilderness? Or are you living in the promised land? Are you living in defeat? Or are you living in victory? Right? You see the analogy now.
01:26:02
And the question is, were they living in defeat? Or were they living in sin? Were they dying and going to hell? Or were they still on their way to heaven? So I think it's a legitimate question at least to ask.
01:26:14
It's kind of the same question we're going to get to when we start talking about Saul the king.
01:26:19
Was he lost or was he saved? A lot of people want to debate that.
01:26:23
And I think it's just like this.
01:26:25
It's an interpretive question.
01:26:27
It's one that the Bible doesn't give us a hard and fast answer on.
01:26:30
We have to come to a conclusion based on how we understand the text and how we understand the concept of salvation.
01:26:37
Right? That's right.
01:26:41
And do we not fail? That's right.
01:26:57
So that's why I brought it up.
01:26:59
Not because I had the answer.
01:27:01
Because I wanted to cause you to think about the question.
01:27:03
It's an important question.
01:27:06
Lastly, the question of who wrote the last part of Deuteronomy.
01:27:09
I think that's a legitimate interpretive question.
01:27:11
Because we know one thing.
01:27:13
If Moses did write it, that was tough.
01:27:17
Because he was already dead.
01:27:20
What's that? Yeah.
01:27:23
And it is.
01:27:24
There are some people who take that.
01:27:26
They say God gave him a prophecy of what would happen.
01:27:28
And he was able to complete the book.
01:27:29
And then he died.
01:27:30
I don't take that position.
01:27:32
I don't think it's necessary.
01:27:33
But there are some who do.
01:27:34
And again, it becomes an interpretive question.
01:27:37
Right? And that's what I want to leave you with.
01:27:38
And if we had time, I would ask you if you could think of others.
01:27:41
But unfortunately, we're out of time.
01:27:43
So let me read this last paragraph.
01:27:45
And we'll close with a prayer.
01:27:47
The Pentateuch is filled with rich historical and theological truth.
01:27:51
It lays many of the foundation stones of the New Testament.
01:27:55
This is why Jesus said in Luke 24, Beginning with Moses, he explained himself from the Old Testament.
01:28:05
Because the story of Christ doesn't begin in Matthew.
01:28:10
The story of Christ begins in Genesis.
01:28:15
Father in heaven, I thank you for this time to study.
01:28:18
I pray that it would truly be fruitful in all of our lives.
01:28:21
And I thank you for having the opportunity, Lord, to talk about your word.
01:28:25
May you be glorified in all that we are doing.
01:28:27
In Christ's name, amen.