Genesis 1-11
When someone decides to read all the way through the Bible from beginning to end, they get off to a pretty good start. Genesis is a wonderful book to read. The stories are interesting and exciting. There is love, intrigue, jealousy, murder, revenge, sex, all the elements of an exciting novel. The drama of these pages have inspired writers such as C.S. Lewis in the second of his space trilogy: Perlandra, John Steinbeck with East of Eden and John Milton’s Paradise Lost.
The first five words of Genesis gives it its own description: In the beginning God created. Genesis is the book of beginnings. Genesis as a Greek word means beginning and the Hebrew title for this book is in the beginning. In Genesis we see the beginning of the world, the beginning of the human race, the beginning of sin, the beginning of our separation from God, the beginning of jealousy and murder, the beginning of the promise of redemption, the beginning of marriage and family life. All this in just the first eleven chapters of Genesis.
For the next three months we are going to take a look at these eleven chapters. There is a sharp distinction between chapters 1-11 and the rest of the book. At the end of chapter eleven there is a genealogy that connects Shem, the son of Noah, to Abram and in chapter 12 we begin a focus on this man who became the father of the Jews.
Chapters 1-11 race through time with just a brief sketch of the events. In chapter 12 time slows down and we begin to see more in depth God’s work in the life of Abram, his family and then his descendants.
These eleven chapters have generated a lot of controversy in the church and I would imagine we have a multitude of ways we read and understand these eleven chapters of Genesis.
One of the more misunderstood chapters of Genesis 1-11 is the first. Let’s take a look at this account of creation.
There are six days of creation. In the bulletin is printed a summary of what was created in those six days. Light and darkness, day and night on the first day; earth’s atmosphere, the sky on the second day; dry land was separated from the waters and plants and trees were created on the third day; the sun, moon and stars, seasons, days and years on the fourth day, sea creatures and birds on the fifth day and finally, land animals and man on the sixth day.
Let me summarize some ways of viewing this account.
The first view requires a belief in six literal, 24 hour days. What the Bible says is exactly what it means. Bishop Usher in the seventeenth century took this view and based on the genealogies in Genesis declared that the world had begun in 4,004 B.C.
This view raises a few questions: If the sun, moon and stars were not created until the fourth day, what was the source of light on the first three days? If in fact days were not created until the fourth day, how was it that there were 24 hour days on the first three days?
A second view holds that in the text of Genesis one can take the ancient wording and read them as symbolic links to our modern scientific world. For this view, the days are not literal 24 hour days but ages of some undermined length and the sequence refers to a evolutionary process in the development of plants and animals. This view does not really help with the questions raised by a literal reading of the text. It only elongates the questions. Now it is not just how did light exist three days prior to the sun, moon and stars but how did it exist for three ages prior to their creation.
This view raises further questions. Plants and trees were created on the third age but the sun was not created until the fourth age. Since plants and trees use photosynthesis as the means of feeding themselves, since plants and trees require the sun for their growth, how did they live for an age prior to the creation of the sun?
A third view says that Chapter 1 of Genesis is a poem with a poetic structure and does not intend to make any statements about the scientific creation of the world or the chronology of its creation.
Part of the evidence for this point of view is that this first chapter of Genesis has a distinct poetic structure. If you look at the insert in the bulletin you can view the first three days as the creation of kingdoms and the second three days as the creation of rulers to rule those kingdoms. So in day one, day and night are created and in day four, the sun is created to rule by day and the moon and stars to rule by night. In day two the sky is separated from the sea. In day five, sea creatures are created to rule the sea and birds are created to rule the sky. In day three, the land is separated from the sea and plant and trees are created. On day six, land animals are created to rule the land and God concludes that it is good.
Then as a summation, he creates man
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”
Man is created to rule over all that has been created and God said it was very good.
In this view, what is true about Genesis is not that it provides a scientific account of creation but that it teaches us that God existed before creation, God created, what God created he pronounced as being good, the high point of creation was the creation of mankind, mankind is given the responsibility to rule over creation, mankind is distinguished from all other creatures in that he alone is made in God’s image, God rested on the seventh day, setting a pattern for mankind’s working life.
I think it makes a difference how we view this first chapter of Genesis and if you want, we can take up this topic in the adult Sunday school class later this morning. But for this sermon I don’t want this to be a distraction.
I read several commentaries and books about Genesis this summer in preparation for this series of sermons. One of the commentaries I found most helpful was written by John Walton who teaches at Wheaton College, an evangelical college in the US.
What I liked about his approach is that he insists over and over on reading Genesis as the Israelites understood it when they read it as opposed to reading it with our modern world view. To read it with our modern world view is to make it say what it did not intend to say.
This is how the Israelites understood their world.
The earth was a flat disc, like a plate. At the edges of the plate, the heavens were attached to the plate, creating a dome over the plate. Underneath the plate was the source of water and the underworld, the place of the dead.
In Job 38:4-6 we see this view of the world when God speaks to Job.
“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
Tell me, if you understand.
5 Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
Who stretched a measuring line across it?
6 On what were its footings set,
or who laid its cornerstone—
You can see in these questions the ancient understanding that the foundation of the earth rests on pillars going deep into the underworld. To measure the earth you stretch a measuring line across it. Not around it but across it. God’s question in Job assumes a flat earth supported by pillars.
And in verse 12
“Have you ever given orders to the morning,
or shown the dawn its place,
13 that it might take the earth by the edges
and shake the wicked out of it?
The image is clearly of God grabbing the edges of the flat disk that is earth and shaking it.
In Ecclesiastes 1:5 there is a description of how the sun rises and sets
The sun rises and the sun sets,
and hurries back to where it rises.
The sun could be observed from its rising in the morning until its setting in the evening. How did it get back to the starting point? In some way it hurried back to its position in the east to be ready for the morning. Did Solomon understand that the earth revolved around the sun? Of course not. That revelation did not occur until 1543 when Copernicus shook up the world with his discovery that the earth rotated around the sun along with other planets.
When we read Genesis, we need to understand how the Israelites understood what was written. It is by doing so that we come to the truth contained in Genesis. If we insist on reading Genesis through our modern, Western, scientific world view we will distort the truth in Genesis rather than uncover it.
This is not a new approach to Scripture. We do this all the time when we read the Bible.
When we read in the Psalm 91:4 that
He will cover you with his feathers,
and under his wings you will find refuge;
his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.
Do we take this to mean that God is a bird? Of course not. We understand that the Psalmists used images when they wrote.
When we read Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount, how do we read it?
Matthew 5:27
“You have heard that it was said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ 28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29 If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. 30 And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.
If we have trouble because we look at things that we ought not to look at, do we actually gouge out our eyes? There have been among the Christian saints in our history those who castrated themselves in application of this text.
We don’t do that because we understand that Jesus was speaking in metaphors, emphasizing the importance of following him in obedience over all other distractions. There is nothing in the world worth separating us from God.
How do we read the parables of Jesus? In Matthew 18 we read the parable of the unmerciful servant. He owed his master a lot of money and his master forgave him his debt. When he left, he met a man who owed him just a little bit of money and he had no mercy and had him thrown into jail. Then this scene follows:
“Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. 33 Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ 34 In anger his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.
35 “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”
It is from these last two verses that the Catholic Church based its doctrine of Purgatory.
We don’t do that because we understand that when you read a parable, the point being made is what is focused on and to make theology from a detail of the story that surrounds the main point is dangerous.
In the Song of Solomon, in chapter four, he describes his bride:
How beautiful you are, my darling!
Oh, how beautiful!
Your eyes behind your veil are doves.
Your hair is like a flock of goats
descending from Mount Gilead.
2 Your teeth are like a flock of sheep just shorn,
coming up from the washing.
Each has its twin;
not one of them is alone.
3 Your lips are like a scarlet ribbon;
your mouth is lovely.
Your temples behind your veil
are like the halves of a pomegranate.
4 Your neck is like the tower of David,
built with elegance;
on it hang a thousand shields,
all of them shields of warriors.
If you read this literally, it’s not a very pretty picture. Doves where eyes should be, goats where hair should be, just shorn sheep in her mouth, and a neck of stone with shields hanging on it. Hardly a picture of loveliness.
This is silly and I know it, but the point is that we read Scripture as it was intended to be read by the one who wrote it. We need to do the same with Genesis.
Imposing a modern scientific understanding of the creation of the world on Genesis is to try to make Genesis say something it never intended to say.
Think about it this way. If Genesis had been written to give an accurate scientific description of the creation of the universe, it would have been incomprehendable. For people who believed that the world was a flat disk, how would they have viewed a description of earth as an orb that rotated around the sun along with other planets suspended in space by opposing forces of gravitational pull? How would they have responded to a description of the Big Banbg and the universe in the first 10-32 of a second of the creation went from at least nine dimensions down to four? How would they have responded to a description of genetics and microbiology?
Such a description would have made Genesis 1 an irrelevant and unbelievable document for all but its last hundred years. In fact, Genesis 1 would have had to keep changing as our scientific understanding of the world progressed over the last five hundred years.
Genesis speaks powerfully to us about God, his intent for us, his interactions with us. In our sermons we will focus on the deeper truths of Genesis. Genesis is a mixture of symbolism and historical events and we will not get distracted in a debate of where we draw the line in each story we examine. At least not in the sermons. Sunday School may be a different case.
It does not really matter if Adam and Eve pulled an apple off an actual tree and a serpent spoke to them or if this is a story told to help us understand the nature of sin. What is really important is what this story teaches us about sin and how it affects us.
So in our sermons we will talk about In the beginning God. What does this mean that God preexisted creation. What are implications for us from this truth? How does this insight enable us to grow in our wonder of God?
We will talk about God looking at what he created and saying that it was good. What does this benediction mean? How does this benediction affect us? What challenges does this benediction bring to us?
We will talk about God’s assignment to mankind to be stewards of this earth. What is our responsibility for the environment of the world? There is a conference now in South Africa to talk about how to protect the environment of the world. How should Christians view the world-wide environmental movement? Where are the excesses of the environmental movement? In what ways should we as Christians work with these movements?
We will talk about God resting on the seventh day. This detail in the first story of Genesis was reinforced by God when he gave the fifth commandment to Moses. In what way do we keep the Sabbath? In what way should we be obeying this commandment?
We will talk about the creation of Eve. What does this text say about male-female relationships? Does this text say anything about male-female relationships? What does this text say about marriage?
We will talk about Adam and Eve taking fruit from the forbidden tree. What does this teach us about sin? We will look at how sin separates us from God, each other and ourselves. And how death reinforces that separation and then how Christ bridged that separation.
We will talk about the curse in Genesis that was pronounced on Adam and Eve. Was it really a curse or just the consequence of the actions of Adam and Eve? In what way was God’s love present in that scene? In what ways do we experience the affects of the decision to sin?
We will look at the story of Cain and Abel. Why was Cain jealous? What do we learn from this first story in the Bible about jealousy and murder?
We will look at the story of Noah and the flood. We will examine the theme of judgement in that story and then the theme of salvation.
Finally we will look at the story of the Tower of Babel. Was this story put in the Bible just to have a stunning contrast to the account of Pentecost in the book of Acts? What does this last story of the first eleven chapters of Genesis teach us?
We will see in Genesis the separation from God that released into our world the tragedy and suffering with which we have to deal all the time. But we will also see the beginnings of the process God undertook to redeem us. We will see God beginning to make covenants with us that moved us along to the point when Christ came and redemption was accomplished.
We are privileged to be on this side of history. The apostle Peter wrote that even angels long to look into these things. We celebrate this morning communion, a time when we remember what Christ has done for us. We celebrate the covenant God has made with us that allows us to boldly approach his throne. We celebrate God’s work in history, beginning in Genesis that has brought us to this place.
I encourage you to read Genesis with me as we move along in this series. Pray for God’s blessing in these sermons. Allow your view of this book to be opened up as God speaks to us.
I love stepping out into a new series simply because of my experience with the other series we have had. God will bless us as he has in the past.
