Genesis – Introduction EBC

Microwave	Stove
Quick, instant meal	Slower, delicious meal
“Quick-answer” preaching	Biblical preaching
How to handle your finances How to divorce proof your marriage How to get along with your boss	Who is God? Who am I? Why am I here? What does God expect of me?
A bunch of “answers” to specific issues	A biblical worldview that helps you to figure out the answer to any question that comes up

If you have been reading the newspapers, or watching the news, over the past few months, you will recognize that the world in 2002 is struggling to come to grips with some enormous issues:

1. The Issue of Conflict – particularly conflict in the Middle East focusing on the nation Israel; conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, between Jews and Arabs. This conflict is not just local; it has global ramifications. The nations of the world are polarized on either side of that dispute. It has become virtually a permanent item on the agenda of the United Nations.

2. The Issue of Evil – what happened back on September 11 dispelled any notions that our world is becoming a safer and more peaceful place. Those horrific events brought us face to face with a depth and degree of human evil that most people never dreamed existed. And now we realize, if we didn’t before, that we live in a world seething with hatred and hostility. And we have to come to grips with the possibility that that evil may break out at any moment in any place.

3. The Issue of Life – scientists and governments are wrestling with the question of What is Life? Technology has made it possible for us to tinker with the basic genetic mechanisms that govern life – even human life. We now possess the ability to engineer, to clone, to “custom-make” plants, animals, and even human beings on demand to our specifications. But the problem we haven’t solved is: Is it right to do so?

4. The Issue of the Cosmos – Astronomers and astrophysicists have made staggering discoveries in the past 20 years that have revolutionized our understanding of the universe in which we live. Just this past week, scientists at NASA in Washington, DC announced that they have discovered two small stars that are made up of an exotic new form of matter that has never before been encountered. This matter is not made up of traditional atoms as we know them – it is made up of subatomic particles called quarks. This matter is so dense that a single teaspoon of it would weigh a hundred billion tons.

Now why am I telling you all this? I would submit to you this morning that the questions raised by these enormous issues—the issues of human conflict, of evil, of the nature of life, and of the universe in which we live—are a good reason to turn back to the very first book of the Bible – to the book of beginnings, the book of Genesis.

Because that book—the book of Genesis—contains insights and answers that will guide us as we seek to deal with these issues.

You want to find answers about the Universe? Genesis tells us where it came from; how it got started; why it is here.

You want to find answers about life? Genesis tells us where life came from and why it is here. And especially, it tells us about human life—why it is so unique; why we, as human beings, are so special.

You want to find answers about relationships and human conflict? You want to know why, for all of our technological sophistication, education, information, why it is that we still can’t get along together? The book of Genesis will give you the answer to those questions.

You want to find answers about the presence of evil in the world? What is it? Where did it come from? How did it get here? How does it work? And is there any cure for it? The book of Genesis has the answers.

I believe that there has never been a better time to study the book of Genesis. People are floundering about these issues—they are in the dark, they are groping for answers. That’s why I’m excited to invite you to join me over the next several weeks as we study the first four chapters of the book of Genesis together.

We’re going to try to find out…What’s it really saying? What does it mean? And what difference should that make in my life today, in 2002?

Now, this morning, I am not going to take you to a particular text in Genesis. I just want to give you a bit of background on the book, and an appreciation for the flavor of it as a whole. So today is introductory.

The first thing we need to understand about the book of Genesis is that it is a book of Facts. It is not a book of myths, fables, or legends. For one thing, it doesn’t have the flavor of that kind of writing. It’s too concrete. Too down to earth. Too true to life.

Genesis is a book about real people who really lived—Adam, Eve, Noah, Abraham, Isaac and the rest. Unlike a myth or a fable, these people are not idealized. They had messy lives and dysfunctional families. The leading characters of Genesis certainly could be noble at times, but then in the next breath, they would go out and do something despicable.

Noah comes out of the ark, fresh from saving the whole human race, and promptly gets drunk and curses his grandson. Abraham, the founder of the nation Israel, gives his wife to another man just to save his own neck.

No, Genesis is not a myth. It is a book of real facts about real people—warts and all. And as such, it is authentic.

I’m sure you realize that the book of Genesis is an incredibly ancient book. Both Jews and Christians claim that it was written by Moses, which would make it roughly 3,500 years old.

Now there have been those who have claimed that Moses couldn’t possibly have written the book of Genesis, because writing hadn’t even been invented 3,500 years ago. Imagine their embarrassment when archaeologists turned up evidence that writing, and alphabets, had been around for at least a thousand years before Moses!

There have been other scholars who have claimed that the book of Genesis, along with the other four books of the Pentateuch, were not written by one man, but by many – at least four, or more. They say that some unknown editor assembled these separate and sometimes contradictory documents into a patchwork that we call the Pentateuch.

However, it is interesting that when you go to the New Testament, you hear Jesus and the apostles quoting from the first five books of the Bible, and they always attribute their quotations to Moses.

And any supposed contradictions in the Pentateuch are seen, on closer study, to harmonize quite well. So Genesis, from a literary standpoint, is authentic. And it is also authoritative.

The book of Genesis speaks with an authority far beyond any other literature that we have discovered from ancient times. Imagine the subject matter that Genesis covers—the creation of the universe; the origin of life on planet Earth; the beginning of the human race; the origin of evil.

Archaeologists have discovered a few other ancient documents which claim to cover some of these topics. But when you read those other documents, they come off as completely fantastic and unbelievable. For example, there is a Babylonian creation story, which is called the Enuma Elish:

At the beginning, there are two monsters—Apsu, a male and Tiamat, a female. They look like dragons. From these two there spring several generations of gods and goddesses, the last of which become very powerful. So powerful, in fact, that Apsu and Tiamat decide that they have to destroy them. So there is a titanic battle. Tiamat is killed. A god named Marduk takes her body and cuts it in half. The upper half becomes the heavens; the lower half becomes the earth.

Tiamat’s chief minister is a creature named Qingu. Marduk captures him and slits open his veins. From the blood that gushes out, he makes human beings.

Then there is an ancient Egyptian version of how the world was created. First, you have a great ocean. On that ocean appears an egg. From that egg is born the sun god. Then the sun god has four children who don’t get along very well. From their fighting and rivalry, the rest of creation takes place.

The Hindu version of creation has the world resting on the backs of three elephants. These three elephants, in turn, stand on the back of a giant turtle, which swims around in a cosmic sea.

In contrast to all of these fantastic myths and legends, you have the majestic words of Genesis 1:1. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” There is no other ancient account like it. It speaks with simple authority.

And the book of Genesis is accurate, although it does not speak in scientific language. Science is constantly changing. So is the language of science. Many of the terms that scientists used 100 years ago are no longer in use, as their understanding of the universe has changed. Scientists today speak of things like quarks and mesons and black holes—terms which would have been utterly strange to scientist living 100 years ago. For that matter, they are virtually unintelligible to non-scientists living today!

So if Genesis had been written in the language of science, it would not have been understandable to anyone living in any age. And it would have been a lot longer than it is!

The Bible says simply that God made man out of the dust of the earth—in other words, man was made out of the same simple chemical elements that the earth is made out of. But suppose that God were to have described that process in scientific terms. What might that have looked like?

Well, we know today that a single human chromosome contains 20 billion bits of information. That would correspond to about 500 million words of code. If you figure that an average book page has about 300 words on it, this would translate into 2 million pages of information. Put those pages into book form, with 500 pages per volume, and you have a library of 4,000 volumes—just to describe what’s in one human chromosome.

That is why God gave us the book of Genesis in terms that everyone could understand—simple, direct, and brief—yet accurate. And nothing that science has discovered and documented about the universe contradicts anything in the book of Genesis.

You say: What about evolution? Scientists claim that evolution is the means by which life originated on planet earth, but in 150 years of trying, they have not been able to document it.

In fact, scientists today are abandoning evolution in increasing numbers, although the popular press, and educational institutions have not chosen to acknowledge this fact. You will not read about this in National Geographic.

For example, Sir Francis Crick was one of the scientists who discovered DNA—the protein structure which forms the basic building block of life. He won a Nobel prize for this discovery. Yet as he studied DNA, Crick came to realize that such a structure could not possibly have evolved from inorganic matter. It is too complex, too intricate, too perfectly designed to have resulted from the chance combination of molecules.

There would be more chance of a tornado going through a junkyard and assembling a Boeing 747 than for a single strand of DNA to have evolved by random chance. Sir Francis Crick therefore came to believe that life had to have been “seeded” on planet earth by some extra-terrestrial intelligence. And he wrote books to that effect. He didn’t say that he believed in God, but he said that he sure didn’t believe in evolution.

So the book of Genesis is a book of Facts.

It is also a book of Firsts. The word “Genesis” comes from the Greek word for “beginning”. And Genesis is all about beginnings. In its pages, we read about the first man, the first woman, the first marriage, the first temptation, the first sin, the first judgment, the first hope of redemption, the first family, the first worship service, the first fight, (isn’t it interesting that the first fight in human history happened over the first worship service?) and the first death.

In Genesis, you have the first garden, the first city, the first appearance of music and the arts, the first fugitive, the first polygamist, the first rebellion, the first flood, the first alcohol problem, the first society, the first language barrier, and the first racial problem. Genesis is a book of firsts.

The Jewish rabbis had a saying about Genesis—they said “Just keep turning the pages, turning, turning, it’s all here.” They also said that you are not allowed to teach Genesis unless you are over 30 years of age—presumably because of the importance of its content. (Just want you to know that I qualify).

Genesis is also a book of Forecasts—it’s as much concerned about the future as it is about the past. In fact, many people have called Genesis the seed-bed of the Bible. All the doctrines that you find later on in the Bible you can find in Genesis in seed form.

Remember, in Genesis, God said to man “If you eat the fruit of that tree, you will surely die.” And the whole history of the human race is a confirmation of that fact. After Adam and Eve had sinned, God said to the serpent “One day, the seed of the woman is going to crush your head.”—and he was speaking of the coming of Jesus Christ, who was born of a virgin, who would defeat Satan and conquer death.

In Genesis 12, God said to Abraham “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” And of course, he was speaking of the nation Israel, through whom the Messiah was going to come. Genesis is a book of forecasts.

And Genesis is a book of Funerals. In Genesis chapter 5, you have a list of genealogies. And in that list there is a phrase repeated over and over again… “Adam lived so many years, and then he died… Seth lived so many years, and then he died… Enosh lived so many years, and then he died… and on an on it goes. Everybody ends up dying in Genesis!

You read about Abel’s funeral in Genesis chapter 4. You read about Abraham’s funeral in ch. 25. You read about Isaac’s funeral in ch. 35. You read about Jacob’s funeral in ch. 49. You read about Joseph’s funeral in ch. 50. The book of Genesis is full of funerals.

These people “were still living by faith when they died” as it says in Hebrews 11:13. God made a lot of promises to the people in Genesis, but…

They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. They were looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.

So the book of Genesis reveals the big secret that, even though we as human beings have been created to live here on earth – this life here on this planet is not all there is. When we die, it isn’t over. That isn’t the final chapter. There’s more – much more!

That brings me to my final point – the book of Genesis—in the final analysis—is a book of Faith. When we read the book of Genesis, we get many answers to many questions, but we don’t get ALL the answers. We get enough information to help us trust God for the rest.

Ultimately, it comes down to the question: Am I willing to trust God for the stuff I still don’t know? Whether I accept or reject the message of the book of Genesis is a matter of faith.

Hebrews 11:3 By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God’s command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.

Did you know that Genesis chapter 1 is the most God-centered chapter in the whole Bible? God is mentioned by name 32 times in 31 verses. When you add in the times that he is referred to by means of a pronoun, God is mentioned personally no less than 43 times in the first chapter of the Bible.

No wonder Satan hates this chapter! No wonder he has done all in his power to discredit this chapter in the minds of men.

Because if God cannot be trusted when he tells us about creation in Genesis 1, how can we trust him when he tells us about salvation in John 3:16? If what he says about earth at the beginning of the Bible is questionable, then what God says about heaven at the end of the Bible is questionable, too.

If we abandon Genesis 1 as unfactual, and unreliable—as an ancient myth that is totally unacceptable to modern science—then Satan has won because he has undermined our confidence in the whole Bible. He has called God’s credibility into question. Which, interestingly enough, is exactly what he did with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

Throughout the book of Genesis, the issue comes down to faith. Am I willing to trust God at his word? God gave Adam and Eve that opportunity and they failed. God gave Abraham that opportunity, and he succeeded—he trusted God. Are you willing to do that today?