The Book of Genesis

 

The book of Genesis is God’s book of beginnings. It was written by Moses probable while he was in the wilderness. It covers over half the history of the OT from the dawn of creation roughly from about 4000 BC to 1700 BC. This first book found in our Bibles is very important because it is the foundation on which all future revelation rest upon. It is the only reliable book that we have that teaches us the origin of the heavens and earth and all the life that cant be found. While the book of Genesis records the history of the origin of the universe it mainly records the history of one family, one race and one nation. The main theme of Genesis is mans need for redemption from sin.

 

Let’s begin our lesson by looking at Chapters 1 – 5.

 

Genesis 1:1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.     

 

From the very first verse we learn about God and that he created everything in 6 days and rested on the 7th. Now look at verse 27 and see what he says about mankind.

 

Genesis 1: 27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.

 

At this point Adam and Eve were without sin and they were pleasing to God. Of course we all know that did not last which brings to one of the key chapters of Genesis and our first major event since the creation of the world. In Genius chapter 3 we learn about the fall of man. God gave Adam and Eve 1 restriction not to eat of the tree of knowledge but the serpent talked Eve into eating from the tree and then she gave it Adam and their eyes were opened and they were of the nakedness. Because of their disobedience the were kicked out of the Garden of Eden but God still provided them some clothing. In  this same chapter of mans fall from sin we get first glimpse into God plan to restore mankind back into his favor.

 

Genesis 3:14 So the LORD God said to the serpent: "Because you have done this, You are cursed more than all cattle, And more than every beast of the field; On your belly you shall go, And you shall eat dust All the days of your life.  15 And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, And you shall bruise His heel."

 

Verse 15 is our first prophecy about Christ. You see God already had a plan to restore mankind though Christ. In fact 1Pet. 1:20 tells us that this plan was in place before the world was even formed.

 

In Chapter 4 we learn about Cain and Able and how Cain commits the first recorded murder and he thought he could get away with but God sees all and he punishes Cain and put a mark on him. The linage of Christ would have gone through Able but since he was killed another was born to take his place Seth Gen 4:25.

 

We learn from these 4 chapters that

 

God is the creator of all things

Even though mankind sinned God put a plan into place save us.

There are consequences to pay when disobey Gods Word

You cant get away anything because God sees all.

 

Lets look at Chapter 6- 11

 

It is here that we come to next major event the great flood. As man begin to multiply so did his sin. The sin of mankind had grown so bad that God said this.

 

Genesis 6: 6 And the LORD was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart.

 

At this point God was ready to wipe all of life but one man and his family stood out because they served God. God instructs Noah to build and ark tells him to make it out of gopher wood and Noah obeyed Gods instructions and it took him over 100 years to build this boat. When Noah finishes and all the animals are on loaded on to the ark God instructs Noah’s family to get on board. The door is closed and the rain begins for 40 days and 40 night just as God promised. All life on the ground was destroyed and only these 8 souls were saved because their obedience to the Lord. Once the flood waters receded once again the earth only had righteous people but God gave the command for them to fruitful and multiply and once again as mankind multiplied so did the sin which brings us to our next great event the scattering of the nations.   

 

In Gen. 11. we learn that mankind has now moved to one place and has one language and one goal. Their goals was to build a tower that reached the heavens because they wanted to show how great they were. God was not part of their lives they only looked to themselves. When God looked down on mankind and their prideful selves confused their language which caused them to scatter all over the face of the earth separating mankind into multiple nations.

 

4 LESSONS WE LEARN FROM GEN. 6-11

1. SIN MAKES GOD GRIEVE IN HIS HEART

2. WHEN GOD SPEAKS WE SHOULD LISTEN

3. GOD SAVES THOSE WHO OBEY

4. BEING PRIDEFULL IS NOT PLEASING TO GOD

 

In the remaining chapters of Genesis we learn about 4 great men.

 

  1. ABRAHAM

He had faith in God and trusted him Genesis 12:1 Now the LORD had said to Abram: "Get out of your country, From your family And from your father's house, To a land that I will show you.  2 I will make you a great nation; I will bless you And make your name great; And you shall be a blessing.  3 I will bless those who bless you, And I will curse him who curses you; And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed."  4 So Abram departed as the LORD had spoken to him, and Lot went with him. And Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.

 

Even though he had no idea where he was going he trusted that God would take care of him. In Gen. 12:10ff we learn about Abraham weakness of lying. There was a great famine in land so they journeyed to Egypt Now Sarah his wife was very pretty and Abraham was afraid that the Pharaoh would kill him and take his wife for his own. So he decided to tell a lie that Sarah was his sister. Now this wasn’t a complete lie because she was his half sister but since he only told part of the story its still a lie. They did try to take Sarah but there whole place suffered a plague and when they found out why they asked Abraham to leave with his wife. Abraham didn’t just lie once he lied twice. In Gen. 20:2ff he tells the same lie to (a bim e leck) the king of (grrr rar). This goes to show that even the most faithful men can sin from time to time.

 

In Gen. 15 God makes a covenant with Abraham which is know as the land promise. He promises him that his descendants will inherit a great deal of land. He also promises Abraham that he will bear a child. In Gen 17 we learn the sign for this covenant was circumcision. From this point forward a male child born was to circumcised on the 8th day. What’s interesting is that after this covenant was made God changed their names to Abraham and Sarah. Before Gen. 17 their names were Abram and Sarai. I think this is neat because whenever we are baptized into Christ we go through a name change because we are now called Christians.

 

In Gen 21 after Abraham was 100 years old and Sarah was past the time of having a child through Gods help that had a son named Isaac. I am sure that had began to wonder if they would ever have a son. You could just imagine how much they loved this son. In Chapter 22 Abraham faith really gets put to the test because ask him to sacrifice his son he had waited for all this time. What’s amazing is Abraham never doubts or questions God and took his son to sacrifice him. As he was about to make fatal blow the angel of the lord stopped him and because of his obedient faith the AOL says . 

 

Genesis 22:18 "In your seed all the nations of the earth shall be blessed, because you have obeyed My voice."

 

So we learn several things from Abraham about our Christians lives today. First of we need to trust is God and realize that even if we do not understand why he wants us to do things found in his word we should do it knowing that he knows best. We also learn that even the most faithful people sin from time to time but you can still be found righteous before God by repenting and striving to do better. Finally we learn that if you are obedient to Gods will you find favor in his site.

 

In chapter 23 Sarah dies which brings us to our 2 Great man

 

2 Isaac 24- 26

 

In Chapter 24 Abraham helps his son find a wife because he did not want him to marry a Canaanite women so he sent his servant to his home country where he meets Rebecca. It was kind of strange how the servant was to know who the right woman was to be. He would ask her to give him a drink and if she said ok and let me also give your camels something to drink then this would be the right women. Rebecca did this very thing. So Isaac and Rebecca were married.  In Chapter 25 we learn that Abraham finds him a new wife and marries Keturah and has several more children and then he dies. Isaac was a lot like his father. First of all both their wives were beautiful and both of the had trouble conceiving. Isaac prayed to Lord and he opened Rebecca womb and she bore 2 sons Esau and Jacob. In Chapter 26 we find out that Isaac has the same weakness his father did about lying. A famine comes along and Isaac and his family go to the same king as his father did.  (a bim e leck) the king of (grrr rar). Isaac tells the king the same lie that Rebecca was his sister which brought about the same results as did when his father had lied.

 

In Chapter 27 -36 we learn about the 3rd great man Jacob. We will call him the scam artist. Jacobs brother Esau was born first so he should had been the one who would of received his fathers blessing and two thirds of his fathers possessions. At this point Isaac was old and could not see so he asked Esau who a hunter to go kill him some food and to serve to him and he would give him his blessing. Well Rebecca heard this and she got her son Jacob and told him to go kill 2 young goats and she cooked it up just like Isaac liked it and she put some of Esuas cloths on Jacob. Now Esau was a very hairy man so she also put the skin of the young goats on Jacobs arms. Then Jacob went  into his fathers tent and lied to him telling him he was Esau. I guess lying ran in family. Since Isaac couldn’t see he rubbed Jacob arms and smelled him just to make sure So Isaac blessed Jacob when he thought he had blessed Esau. So with Jacob and Rebecca working together they pulled off the perfect scam. When Esau came back it was to late his birthright had be stolen from him and he ready to tear Jacob limb from limb. What’s interesting is that God knew that this was going to happen while these 2 brothers were in the womb because back Gen 25:23 God said the older shall serve the younger.  

 

At this point Jacob runs for his life and ends up at his uncle Labans place. It is here that he meets the love of his life Rachel in Chapter 29 But now its time for the scam artist to be scammed himself. He works a deal with his uncle that he will work 7 years for him in exchange to marry Rachel. 7 years pass and Jacob thinks he getting Rachel but the sneak his oldest daughter Leah in instead. He didn’t learn until the morning that he had been tricked and now he was married to Leah. He had to work another 7 years for Rachel. Now Jacob wasn’t being very nice to Leah so God blessed her with son after son while Rachel did not bare any children. Finally God opened Rachel womb as well and she gave birth to our final great man of Genesis Joseph. A few more interesting things about Jacob was that he wrestled with God and God blessed him and when he did he changed his name to Israel. Jacob and his brother Esau managed to mend old wounds.

 

One of the main things learned from Jacob is be careful how you treat others or others may treat you the same way.

 

4. Joseph. 37 - 50  

 

You can see the providence of God at work in just about every book of the Bible but you can really see it story of Joseph. We all know this story. Since Joseph was born of Rachel Jacob showed favoritism to him and made him a coat of many colors which made his other brother jealous. To top it all off Joseph started having dreams and telling his brothers and his father that they would be bowing down before him. So when Joseph went to go check on his brothers one day they decided to kill him but the oldest brother Ruben would not let that happen so they sold him into slavery instead. Next Joseph finds himself as a slave at Potiphars house Gen. 39 . Since God was with Joseph everything he put his hand to prospered. Now Potiphars wife tried to force Joseph to lie with her but he refused and ran out of the house and this landed him into prison but God was still with him and again he even prospered in prison. In Gen. 40 Joseph interprets the dream of a baker and a butler. The butler is restored in 3 days and the baker dies in 3 days. Now Joseph asked the Butler to mention him to the Pharaoh so that he could get of prison. Of course the butler did not mention him until the Pharaoh started having these dreams that no one could interpret. So in Gen 41 Joseph interprets the Pharaohs dream and tells him that their will be 7 years of plenty and 7 years of famine. Since Joseph was about to do this he was put in command just below the Pharaoh himself. Sure enough just Joseph said there was 7 years of plenty and then 7 years of famine. When the 7 years of famine began Jacobs son went to Egypt to buy some grain and Joshua accused them of being spies of course the defended themselves and he decided to test them so he made them go back home and bring back Benjamin which was Rachels 2nd son that she died giving birth to. When the come back the eat with Joseph and he sends them away but he plants some valuable in Benjamin bag. Joseph has them stopped and tells them whoever has stolen the valuables will become my slave. Of course when they saw that Benjamin was the one Judah begged and pleaded with Joseph  to take him instead because he just knew that if they had to tell the father Jacob they had to leave Benjamin behind that he would surely die. This made Joseph see that his brother had changed and it made he cry and in Gen 45 he reveals his true identity to his brothers.  Look at Gen. 45.4 and we will see that Joseph now sees the providence of God.

 

Genesis 45:4-8  4 And Joseph said to his brothers, "Please come near to me." So they came near. Then he said: "I am Joseph your brother, whom you sold into Egypt.  5 "But now, do not therefore be grieved or angry with yourselves because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life.  6 "For these two years the famine has been in the land, and there are still five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvesting.  7 "And God sent me before you to preserve a posterity for you in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance.  8 "So now it was not you who sent me here, but God; and He has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt.  

 

Joshua learned a valuable lesson that we can learn as well and that is that God is in control and even when we are at our lowest point God is still with us and working things out for the better. God does not forsake us and will take care of us. Now at the end of Genesis 50 Joshua dies. We have came a long ways in a short amount of time. As you can tell we have a lot to look forward to as Johnny teaches the book of Genesis in depth. I have just barely touched the surface of the great book of beginnings and I hope you see how important of a book it is. This book is not just a history of man but is also a book of obedient faith. Its very interesting that in Heb. 11: 1-22  it talks about the kind of faith that you and I should have and all of  these verses uses examples out of the book Genesis for what kind of faith we should have.