The Greatest Story Ever Told (Pt 2)

An Introduction to Genesis
2008.09.21
one28 Sunday worship

Last week we took our time to talk about the story of Genesis, specifically the fact that Genesis falls into the narrative genre. Knowing that Genesis is narrative helps us approach our study of the book, so we’ll know what to look for (things like characters and settings and plot), as well as things not to look for (like hidden codes and secret meanings and even stand alone moral stories).

Biblical narrative draws us into the story, into God’s story, and begins to frame our beliefs as we understand and take on God’s perspective. Narrative vividly demonstrates God’s involvement, and effectively works to bring us inside His drawing room, at least to the extent that He reveals Himself.

Without the book of Genesis, nothing would make sense. The other 65 books of the Bible would be incomprehensible, and ignoring or rejecting Genesis would also undermine everything that follows. The Law depends on Genesis. The work week and Sabbath depend on Genesis. The gospel depends on Genesis. And every view of the world apart from Scripture is incoherent. Without Genesis there is no purpose or meaning for life. There are no standards of truth, or beauty, or goodness. There is no hope.

The Genesis narrative answers all of those issues and more. The book of Genesis frames our beliefs, and it does so in story form. This morning we’re going to finish our introduction of the book by considering some of the components that shape this story.

Title

Every story has a title. The title for the book in our English copies is Genesis, which is borrowed from the Greek name for the book (Γένεσις) meaning “origin, generation, or beginning.” The original Hebrew title is the first word/phrase in Genesis 1:1 “in the beginning” (‏בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית). Genesis is the book of beginnings or origins. It describes the beginning of human and family life, the beginning of sin, and the beginning of God’s story of redemption as He makes a people for Himself.

This is why Genesis frames our beliefs, because it establishes our identity and purpose by starting at the beginning.

It’s also important to point out that Genesis is the first of the five book of the Pentateuch. The Greek word, “Pentateuch,” comes from pente (πέντε) “five,” and teuchos (τευχος) “volume”; so five-volumes. These five books are also called the Torah or the Law, because they contain the civil and religious laws of the nation. Genesis lays the beginning foundation of the Torah, of the Old Testament, as well as all the Scriptures.

Narrator

Every story also has an author or narrator (defined as “one who gives a spoken or written account of something”). Since Genesis is Scripture, it is God-breathed (cf. 2 Timothy 3:16). Therefore, the ultimate author of the story is God. This book is the beginning of God’s self-revelation. He teaches us about His character and His creativity and His holiness and His graciousness and His faithfulness. The primary author of Genesis is God.

The human instrument through whom God wrote this story was Moses. It is difficult to find a commentary that is willing to claim Moses as the narrator without qualification. I’ve read a couple hundred pages from modern “scholars” who question and doubt. Of course, the book of Genesis does not name the author, as do many other OT and NT books. But there are good reasons to believe that Moses wrote Genesis, namely, because God says so.

The Pentatuech itself affirmed Moses wrote it. Moses explains that the Lord commissioned him to write the history of the nation (Exodus 17:14), as well as their national laws (Leviticus 1:1-2; Deuteronomy 1:1). Moses claims to have written the story of the Exodus (Numbers 33:1-2).

Other Old Testament books affirmed Moses wrote it. Joshua calls the Torah “the Book of the Law of Moses” (Joshua 8:31), referring to all five of the first books, including Genesis. King David commissioned Solomon to keep “the law of Moses” (1 Kings 2:3). Ezra called the Torah the “book of Moses” (Ezra 6:18), as did Nehemiah (Nehemiah 13:1). The prophet Daniel refers to it as “the law of Moses” (Daniel 9:11), and even the final chapter of the final book of the OT exhorts the people to “remember the law of my servant Moses” (Malichi 4:4). So the OT calls it the Law of Moses, the Book of Moses, and the Book of the Law of Moses.

If that weren’t enough evidence, the apostle Paul affirmed Moses’ authorship. Paul picked up on the same designations found in the OT in Acts 26:22, and claimed Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch in Romans 10:19; 1 Corinthians 9:9; and 2 Corinthians 3:15.

And Jesus affirmed Mosaic authorship (Matthew 8:4), calling it “the book of Moses” (Luke 12:26). In the story of the rich man and Lazarus, He refers to men who wouldn’t believe “Moses and the prophets” (Luke 16:29, 31). In particular, Jesus said Moses gave the Jews circumcision (John 7:22), and the regulations concerning circumcision are given principally in Genesis 17:9-14 (even more than in Leviticus 12:3). There can be no doubt that Jesus attributed the Pentateuch, including Genesis, to Moses.

God said Moses authored Genesis =through kings and prophets in the OT, and He said so again through apostles and through His own Son in the NT. The early church also confirmed Moses as the author.

And who better to write this story than Moses? He was well educated in Pharaoh’s house as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter (Exodus 2:1-10). He had access to all the best literature and documents. He had personal knowledge of the climate, agriculture, and geography of the land. He was called by God to lead His people, motivated to write the nation’s history. And he had plenty of time during forty years of desert wandering to compose it. It seems that sometime after the Exodus (c. 1445 BC) and before Moses’ death (c. 1405 BC), God revealed to him the truths about the beginning. Moses is a happy, little, creator, weaver-man, who wrote and arranged Genesis with unity and creativity.

Let me quickly suggest a couple reasons why various people deny Mosaic authorship.

1. Many who deny Mosaic authorship also deny God’s supernatural work. They assume it is impossible for God to help Moses write, and only look for human explanations. They assume that miracles are impossible, so inspiration is impossible.
2. Many others who deny Mosaic authorship deny that any Hebrew author alive during Moses’ time was capable of using more than one name for God, or writing in more than one style, or using different synonyms. They base their denial on the theory of evolution. They’re “convinced that man had not evolved to the state of culture described in Genesis until much later than the time of Moses and that, in fact, Moses could not have written any part of Genesis or the rest of the Pentateuch, since writing was unknown in his day” (Morris, p. 23). Later, more developed writers only “allowed the story to be circulated that these (stories) had come down from Moses, in order to invest them with the authority of the great Lawgiver” (Morris, p. 23).

Both types of denials are based on faulty assumptions.

Even though he was writing approximately 300 or so years after Joseph (and the end of Genesis), God enabled Moses to record the generations with accuracy and perspective. The Bible doesn’t tell us whether he received direct revelation from God in audible of vision form, or whether he received the story from oral traditions passed down from fathers to sons, or whether he gathered written records, and edited them into final form. But we do know that “the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend” (Exodus 33:11). The details of the facts (names, ages, dates), the minutia of the narration, and the perspective all add up to an amazing book. Moses wrote every part of the story necessary to frame our beliefs about God and about God’s people.

The Setting: Time and Place

Every story needs a stage, and there are distinct scene changes throughout Genesis.

The first 11 chapters cover at least 2000 years or so. I don’t say “at least” 2000 years because I believe in any type of day-age theory of creation where the first six days of creation represent hundreds or thousands, or even millions of years, during which time some sort of theistic evolution was happening. Instead, I say at least 2000 years because it’s possible that there are some generations missing in the genealogies in Genesis, that may account for a few millennia, depending on how many are missing.

Regardless, the location for chapters 1-11 is Mesopotamia, also referred to the Fertile Crescent. We don’t know exactly where the Garden of Eden was/is, and even if we did, angels are guarding it. But you can see on the map that there’s a reason why it was so fertile.

Then at the Tower of Babel (chapter 11), God dispersed men all over the planet. So we might have expected the story to broaden out and cover various tracks of world history and geography. But just the opposite is true. The story narrows in and focuses on one man, his family and travels, and the other nations are backdrop for his story.

So from chapter 12, Abram moves his family into Canaan (12:5). He separated from Lot as their herds increased, but God promised Abram and his descendents the land of Canaan, with very specific borders (13:14; 15:18-20). The focus from Genesis 12-36 is the promised land, even though Abraham himself didn’t ever own it all. That part of the promise is still awaiting fulfillment. The middle section of Genesis covers 193 years.

And then the final 14 chapters give the most space to cover the least amount of time. Chapters 37-50 contain the story of Joseph, and how God saved His people by sending a man ahead of them to Egypt so that they would not die of starvation due to the famine in Canaan.

Characters

Every story has people. Genesis certainly contains the most well-known, and flannelgraph covered characters in the OT: Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Ishmael and Isaac, Jacob and Esau, and Joseph. The first three are characters at the beginning of humanity, the last group are characters at the beginning of God’s people. Nor can we forget about Lot and his wife, Laban, his daughters Leah and Rachel, Potiphar and his wife, and Joseph’s brothers.

As I said last week, however, God is the primary character. This is His story, and He is always the hero. The book of Genesis is littered with disobedient, defiant, and disbelieving men. But it shows God’s patience, purity, and promises to sinful men.

The Plot

And every story moves along a particular story line, starting at the beginning and progressing toward an end.

I really like the simplicity that Moses built into the story by dividing Genesis up by generations. That will be how I help us build the pieces together as well. But it is helpful to see Genesis from a number of additional, and reasonable patterns as well.

For example, Bruce Wilkinson and Ken Boa have observed the movement of Genesis 1-11 in terms of the flow of four main events: the creation (1:1-2:25), the fall (3:1-5:32), the flood (6:19-9:29), and the tower of Babel/making of many nations (10:1-11:9). In these events we see the beginning of the human race, sometimes referred to as primeval history, or the earliest history of the world. I would also point out that once the story hits chapter three, sin spreads quickly, twice. From Adam and Eve to so much disobedience that God wiped out everyone except for Noah, and then from Noah to so much defiance at Babel that God dispersed everyone.

The rest of Genesis focuses not on events, but on four people: Abraham 11:10-25:18), the chosen seed Isaac (25:19-26:35), the chosen seed Jacob (27:1-36:43), and Joseph–who was most loved, and through whom the chosen seed (Judah) was saved–(37:1-50:20). This long section reveals the beginning of the Hebrew race, that is, the nation of Israel. It is not primeval, but patriarchal history, covering the early fathers of Israel. It’s easy to see why God is often called “the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” Whereas chapters 1-11 describe the spread of sin (rebellion), chapters 12-50 develop God’s gracious, initiating, faithful work of salvation (redemption). It is the beginning of God’s outworking of His promise to Abram in 12:1-3, to give land to His people, to make them into a great nation, and to bless all the families of the earth. By the end of the book, there are only seventy persons, but the nation would grow in Egypt (Genesis 46:27; Exodus 1:5; cf. Genesis 50:20).

I think it only makes sense to see God’s creation of a people as the plot emphasis, more than His creation of the world and human beings. Of course, looking at the order of the story, the four events (and first twenty generations from Adam to Abraham) come first and are the foundation. But only two chapters are devoted to the creation of the universe. The beginning of sin is given only one chapter.

It is impossible, then, to ignore the proportion of the story, and that 4/5ths of Genesis, covering less than 300 years, clearly concentrates on God’s redemptive story in only four generations (from Abraham to Joseph). In addition, the rest of the Bible, while building on the creation account, is even more interested in bringing God’s salvation into our focus. The plot progresses as God saves.

Conclusion

I spent an entire sermon explaining how Genesis frames our beliefs on things like humanity, family, society, history, and morality. When I did so, I emphasized that the THEOLOGY of Genesis is key. That should be obvious from today as well, that everything owes its beginning to God. He is the story-teller. He is the hero. He is the point.

I’d like to suggest a few things that stand out to me about God in the Genesis story. These are theological points of the plot. While Genesis doesn’t teach us doctrine about God directly, it does teach us about Him clearly through the story.

1. God IS.

Unlike everything else, there is no genesis of God. In the beginning, God already was. Moses makes no defense or argument for the existence of God. He is there. Even the name YHWH (“LORD”) means, “I am.” He is the beginning and the end.

2. God is personal and relational.

He is talking with Himself in relationship (“Let us make man in our image” – Gen 1:26). Though Genesis doesn’t give us an exhaustive explanation of the Trinity, there are Persons in God and They are in relationship within the Godhead.

And He cares about individuals. Moses frames God’s story in Genesis by persons. The pinnacle of creation was man made in God’s image. God talks and walks with Adam and Eve in the garden, and when they sinned, they lost the fellowship of the relationship. He talks and makes covenant with Abram. He wrestles with Jacob. He is relational, and the God of persons.

That means we can know Him and have a relationship with Him.

3. God is sovereign and active.

He is providentially involved everywhere. From the creation of heaven and earth, through the universal flood, through dispersing nations, through famines and travels, God is moving. God initiated with Abram. God initiated with Joseph. His plan is being worked out all the time and in every place.

4. God is gracious and faithful.

He is eager to make a name for Himself, mostly by patient, faithful fulfillment of salvation promises. As I said earlier, 4/5ths of the book of Genesis is about God’s saving program. God is not hindered by man’s failure(s). Genesis 12-50 is “bringing together the promises of God to the patriarchs and the faithfulness of God in keeping those promises” (Hamilton, p. 46). Just like God made man the crown of His creation, so salvation is the crown of history.

That means we can believe His word and trust Him.

5. God is not done.

The land promises have not yet been totally fulfilled. Not only that, the book of Revelation is the other bookend to much of what begins in Genesis. The curse is reversed. The serpent is finally defeated. All His promises are realized.

We wait on the Lord, and can hope in Him always.