Introduction to Genesis

The Story of Genesis

1-3

With this first book of the Bible we begin a five year adventure. That may seem like a long time, but it is not nearly as long as the time it took for this wonderful collection of sixty-six books to be written. That took many hundreds of years.

The first five books of the Bible were written by Moses. We begin the story of God and His people with a work that was written probably around 1500 BC or so. We are obviously beginning in the middle of God’s story. If fact, even when we begin with the creation of the world, we are still not at the beginning of the story.

Before the world was made, God is. From eternity past, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is. God is eternal, and so are His plans. All His decrees are established before the opening events of Genesis.

The first three chapters of the Bible are very important. Here we have in seed form everything else that will have its flower in the rest of the Bible and in the rest of everything that the Lord will do.

In these opening chapters we see that God created everything, and that human beings were created in God’s image. We have a very special place in God’s works. Human beings were created to rule everything else in creation under God and for God. God granted to the first man the gift of a woman, with the design that they would serve the Lord together.

God also established an arrangement between humanity and God. Man was to obey God and live. Disobedience would lead to death. This arrangement or covenant between God and man was radically violated when the first man ate of the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This one act brought about great pain, suffering, and death into the world.

God’s judgment against humanity was immediately answered by the announcement of a special eternal arrangement between the Father and the Son to overturn evil in God’s plan of a comprehensive salvation through His plan of grace.

4-11

In the next eight chapters, God shows the devastation of the fall of humanity in Adam. We learn of envy, murder, arrogance, and all kinds of abuse. But we also hear about those who are calling upon the name of the Lord.

God speaks in a summary way about our deadly depravity in the beginning of chapter six. He then displays His judgment against the earth in the account of the flood. Even here we see worship and hope in the rescue of Noah and his family, for Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.

After the flood, we are given a sense of a new beginning in the Lord’s covenant with Noah, His posterity, and all of the earth. Here is the plan for order in a fallen world. The Lord will hold back His judgment for a future day, and the waters would never again become a flood to destroy the earth.

Yet immediately in that generation we see that sin is still in the world in a devastating way. Then generations later we see a society working together to make an unauthorized way to eternity in the heavens. The Lord scatters humanity at this time and the nations and peoples of the world come into being.

From this point we see the movement of generations toward the coming of one man who will follow in the way of faith. He will be the beginning of the line that will lead to the chosen nation of Israel as well as many other nations.

12-50

The remainder of Genesis tells the story of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jacob’s sons, especially Judah and Joseph. The recurrent story over these four amazing generations is man’s inability and God’s sovereign power. At every point along the way of the account of God’s people it would appear that all hope was lost. Yet the Lord would accomplish His will to bring about a perfect salvation through a descendant of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Judah.

At the end of the book of Genesis we are again at one of these points of trouble when it would appear that all hope might be lost. The people of God are in Egypt and will soon be slaves far from the land that the Lord has promised to give to them. The book closes with the solemn promise of God’s people to carry the bones of Joseph to the Promised Land in a day yet to come.

Genesis and the Story of the Bible

The Lord’s sovereignty over everything is wonderfully exhibited in this opening book of the Bible. God is the creator of the heavens and the earth. God is the one who ordered His creation, and particularly ordered His relationship with humanity. God is the one who judges good and evil. God is the one who brings curse and blessing. God is the author of all promise and hope.

The Lord reveals the content of our hope little by little and in various ways. He announces that His great promise will be accomplished through a child of the woman, who will defeat the enemy of God who was somehow in the world before man had sinned. He announces through three covenant oath ceremonies that it will be through the shedding of the blood of a God/Man substitute that the Lord’s ultimate victory will come. He shows the importance of faith in the promises of God for those who would be credited with righteousness. He displays the pathway to exaltation through the valley of deep humiliation. He grants that his servants would have faith in some good thing that would go beyond this mortal life.

In this book God also begins the story of Israel, from whom will come this great God/Man Messiah. At the end of this book, so much has been accomplished in God’s long plan of redemption. Still it is clear that it is the Lord Himself who must help us to take the next step of faithfulness. This sovereign Lord will accomplish all of His holy will. We are His beloved children. He is the Creator, the Sustainer, and the Redeemer.