Genesis - the Book of Beginnings

1997 has already been a momentous year. Since the beginning of this year, there have been four remarkable news stories which I’m sure are going to be on everybody’s list as the most significant stories of the year 1997. And they all begin with the letter “c”.

1. The appearance of the comet Hale-Bopp. Millions of people around the world have looked up into the night sky to see this strange and beautiful visitor from beyond the solar system. They’ve asked questions like: What is it? Where did it come from? Why is it there? Where is it going? And those questions have led to even bigger questions about the Universe itself.

2. The cloning of life. Just two months ago, scientists in Scotland announced that they had succeeded in extracting the genetic code from an adult sheep and transplanting that code into the fertilized egg of another sheep. That egg, in turn, was transplanted into the womb of a third sheep where it developed into an embryo and was born. The resulting sheep was an exact genetic copy, or clone, of the first one.

This development led to all sorts of speculation about the possibility of cloning human life—and the ethical and moral implications of that. If it turns out to be possible to clone human beings, should we do so? What would their identity be? Would they be less than human? What makes a human being a human being?

3. The third story has to do with conflict—specifically, the ongoing conflict between the Jews and the Arabs in Israel. After a few hopeful steps last year toward a peaceful solution of the Palestinian question, the whole process this year seems to have come unglued.

Suicide bombings, shootings, and rock-throwing demonstrations have plunged the land of Israel back into those convulsions of hatred and mistrust that have ruled the area for years. And the rest of the world looks on and wonders if there will ever be an end to it. Will they ever learn to get along?

For that matter, what about Bosnia, or Zaire, Rwanda, or Sri Lanka. Why do people hate each other? What is it about us as human beings that makes us want to kill others like ourselves?

4. The last story—a very recent story—is about a cult. About two weeks ago, in a quiet, prosperous neighborhood outside San Diego, 39 members of the Heaven’s Gate cult carefully and deliberately committed suicide by eating applesauce laced with phenobarbital. They did so because they believed that they were going to leave behind their human bodies in order to move to a higher plane of existence—specifically, to join a UFO which was hiding in the tail of the Hale-Bopp comet.

They received this teaching—a weird blend of Star Trek and the X-Files theology—from a mentally-unbalanced former opera singer who had been in and out of psychiatric institutions.

And as we watched the police bring out the body bags, we asked ourselves: How could people believe such a thing—let alone be willing to stake their lives on the truth of it? The whole grisly episode caused many people to re-examine what they believe about ultimate truth and why they believe it.

I would submit to you this morning that the questions raised by these four big news stories of 1997—the comet, the cloning, the conflict, and the cult—are a good reason to turn back to the first book of the Bible.

Because that book—the book of Genesis—contains the answers to all of these questions that people are asking today.

Why study the book of Genesis? To find answers about the Universe. Genesis tells us where it came from; how it got started; why it is here.

Why study the book of Genesis? To find answers about life. Genesis tells us where life came from and why it is here. And specifically, it tells us about human life—why it is so unique; why we, as human beings, are so special.

Why study the book of Genesis? To find answers about relationships. For all of our technological sophistication, education, information, why is it that people still can’t get along together. Why is it that our century, the 20th century, has been the bloodiest century in human history? The book of Genesis has the answer to that.

Why study the book of Genesis? To find answers about truth. What is truth? Where do we get it? Do we get it from scientific inquiry? Do we get it from philosophical speculation? Or do we get it from another source—a source beyond ourselves. The book of Genesis has the answer to that.

There has never been a better time to study the book of Genesis than right now. Because people are floundering about these issues—they are in the dark, they are looking 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 ask questions like…What’s it really saying? What does it mean? And what difference should that make in my life today, in 1997?

Now, this morning, I don’t want 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.

And the first thing we need to understand about the book of Genesis is that it is a book of Facts. In other words, it is not a book of myths, or fables, or legends. 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. And it’s not a snow job. It doesn’t try to idealize these people. It tells us that they had messy lives and dysfunctional families. The leading characters of Genesis 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 human race, and promptly gets drunk and curses his grandson. Abraham, the founder of the nation Israel, cravenly 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 about 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. They claim that the fact that you have two accounts of creation—one in Genesis 1 and another in Gen. 2, or the different names for God that are used—show that it was not one man that wrote Genesis, but at least four, or more.

They say that some unknown editor assembled these separate and sometimes contradictory accounts into a patchwork quilt that we call the Pentateuch.

However, it is interesting that when you go to the New Testament, and you hear Jesus and the apostles quoting from the first five books of the Bible, they always attribute their quotations to Moses. They say things like “Has not Moses said…” I think that Jesus knew better than the modern critics.

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

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

There are several other ancient documents which claim to cover these topics. But when you read these other accounts, you find them to be completely fantastic and unbelievable. For example, take the 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.

Or take the ancient Egyptian version of the creation story. 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, are standing on the back of a giant turtle, which swims around in a cosmic sea.

In contrast to all of these myths and legends, you have the majestic words of Genesis 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 it 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 utter gibberish to scientist living 100 years ago.

So if Genesis had been written in scientific language, 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 revealed in scientific terms the construction of a human being. What might that have looked like?

Well, 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 chose to reveal it to Moses 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 Genesis.

Notice that I said documented. 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.

The book of Genesis uses simple, direct language to describe the process of creation and the origins of human life. Genesis is a book of Facts.

It is also a book of Firsts. The word “Genesis” comes from the Greek word for “beginnings”. 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 hint of redemption, the first family, the first worship service, the first fight, (isn’t it interesting that the first fight happened over the first worship service?) and the first death.

In Genesis, you have the first garden, the first city, the first fugitive, the first polygamist, the first rebellion, the first flood, the first drunk, 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 phrase repeated over and over again… “Adam lived 930 years, and then he died… Seth lived 912 years, and then he died… Enosh lived 905 years, and then he died… and on an on it goes. Everybody’s 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 whole book is full of funerals.

That’s because these people who were far from perfect, but who had staked their lives on the trustworthiness of God—these people “were still living by faith when they died” as it says in Hebrews 11:13.

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.

You see, Genesis—in the final analysis—is a book of Faith. Ultimately, whether you accept of 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.

You cannot scientifically prove whether or not these things happened. They are outside the realm of science. It comes down to a matter of faith. Does Genesis describe things the way they seem to be?

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 you 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 your 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. Are you 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?