Or, Reasons for Studying Genesis
Scripture: Genesis 1:1
Date: February 1, 2015
Speaker: Sean Higgins
I bit the bait and clicked an inflammatory link a while back that permanently burned my brain. A straightforward tweet asked: What is the most offensive verse in the Bible? and promised an answer behind a click. The answer surprised me, stirred me, and settled for me so much of our cultural, and even Christian and Christian cultural, woes.
The most offensive verse in the Bible is Genesis 1:1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
If that is true—and I believe it without hedging or hesitation, without a wink or crossed fingers behind the back—then God must be acknowledged as Creator, thanked as Maker, and obeyed as Lord by all. This God who created rules and He makes the rules. He does not need anyone’s counsel, nor does He ask for it or take it. He did not create in order to disclaim His authority but rather to demonstrate it.
As long as there have been men on this planet those men have thought about their identity. All the libraries and all the algorithms at Google cataloging peoples and religions and philosophies and poetry have not supplied a better or more imposing answer than Genesis 1:1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Every creature owes God everything, including the fact and form of being. That means that our identity is defined for us, our identity is not determined by us. Who am I? Why am I here? I don’t get to answer those however I want, and certainly not without embracing God in the answer. Hence the offense. It’s starting to wonder, did God make my toes so that He could step on them?
The widest divide in the world is not the divide between male and female, or land and sea, heaven and earth, sun and moon, or even east and west across the universe, but between the Creator and creation. No matter how much a man doesn’t like Him, or ignores Him, or rebels against Him, no man can ever successfully scratch God’s face out of the picture. Man cannot relieve God of His position, replace God in His power, or even reach God on his own; the difference is infinite.
The first lie ever told on earth put the idea in man’s mind that he could define the world for himself. The serpent told Eve that she could “be like God, knowing good and evil.” That’s a way to say that she could be the judge. She could make the call, define and decide for herself. Once she could do that, she could make the world however she wanted. She could make herself whatever she wanted, even into a himself if that floated her boat.
That’s a lie, of course, though it’s one that has deceived generations for some 6,000 years. We keep trying to recreate ourselves because we have rejected the revelation of God. But our attempts at self-identification don’t work. Such attempts simply identify us as fools.
John Calvin began his Institutes of the Christian Religion with the thesis that we cannot know ourselves apart from knowing God.
[I]t is certain that man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God’s face, and then descends from contemplating him to scrutinize himself. (I.I.2)
No wonder we’ve learned so little from our “enlightened” and evolved teachers. God is gone, and so is our sense of direction.
Our generation’s confusion about the roles of men and women is precarious, as is our understanding of marriage and family. We are a people thirsty for identity and purpose, yet our “information” generation may be the emptiest ever. We are distressed about the condition of our planet, afraid we’ll wreck it or nuke it and deplete all our natural resources, so we campaign to save the whales and save the cardboard. Our wise men both insist that men descended from monkeys while simultaneously trying to build up the people’s self-esteem. Personal and national standards of morality are lame. We are forlorn or fearful about the future, or simply tickled that Netflix can distract us till we get there.
We are disconnected from reality. We are disconnected from each other. We are disengaged from dreams and drive and determination. We are unhooked from history and heritage. We have little, if any, conviction to stabilize us. Most of all, we’re severed from God. We are a wandering, wicked, formless generation divorced from any story.
We need Genesis. If we want to know God and know ourselves, then there is no better place to start than at the beginning of it all, with the beginning of the Bible. In the book of Genesis, Moses tells the story of creation, of life, of humanity, and of God’s people. He doesn’t simply report the historical facts, he frames our entire way of looking at the world. Moses records the story of our ancestors, their relationships and their experiences, their triumphs and their crashes, their strengths and their sins, their rebellion and God’s faithfulness. More than that, he reveals the beginning of God’s eternal story of redemption through generations.
To tell this story, Moses built the book of Genesis on a pronounced literary structure. After a prologue/introduction in 1:1-2:3 relating the first seven days of creation, Moses weaves together 10 sections all starting with the heading “These are the generations of X.”
The key word is “generations.” It is the Hebrew word toledot (תּוֹלֵדוֹת). The word refers to that which is born or produced, in other words, the historical result (Hamilton, 9). Half of the generation formulas in Genesis initiate a genealogy, a simple list of descendants owing their origin to the head figure (5:1; 10:1; 11:10; 25:12; 36:1). Those family trees establish historical context and credibility.
The other half of generation formulas, however, introduce more than lineage, they launch into “the story of X” (Hamilton, 2). For example, “this is the story of” creation (2:4), the flood (6:9), Abraham’s life (11:27), Jacob’s life (25:19), and Joseph’s life (37:2). Moses uses this phrase to frame the narratives of Genesis.
The illustration of framing is simple enough. When we frame a picture or painting, we mount the painting with borders that protect and typically accentuate it. When we frame a house, we shape the footprint and the floor-plan and create structural stability. In a figurative sense, we frame an argument or debate by setting the agenda, directing attention to a particular issue and constructing boundaries so the participants know what is out of bounds.
Moses framed the broad outline—the Roman numerals, so to speak—of Genesis by generations. But through the story of ancient generations, he also builds the framework that our generation needs for interpreting our observations and experiences, for responding to moral questions and hot button topics, for knowing what it means to live in relationship with fellow creatures and with our Creator.
This is why we need to study Genesis. In the book of Genesis, God, through Moses, builds and defines and sets in place the most necessary truths for framing any generation. Genesis creates and shapes and fills our worldview beliefs.
It may sound odd to speak of worldview beliefs, especially in our empirical age; truth about the world comes from scientific facts, we say, and belief belongs in the realm of personal preference. But every worldview requires faith. The question isn’t whether or not faith is required, but what is faith in? The author of Hebrews put an understanding of creation squarely on faith terms:
Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. For by it the people of old received their commendation. By faith we understand that the universe was created by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things that are visible. (Hebrews 11:1–3)
We cannot understand the world we live in apart from faith and Genesis directs our faith to understand the kind of place this is, the architecture of the cosmos.
It’s called a worldview. Abraham Kuyper may have coined the expression, using the word weltanschauung, one’s “world- and life-view.” He also made no bones about it that the only world- and life-view that could explain everything was one that acknowledged a sovereign, holy, loving, Creator God.
[N]ot only the church, but also the world belongs to God and in both has to be investigated the masterpiece of the supreme Architect and Artificer. A Calvinist who seeks God, does not for a moment think of limiting himself to theology and contemplation, leaving the other sciences, as of a lower character, in the hands of unbelievers; but on the contrary, looking upon it as his task to know God in all his works, he is conscious of having been called to fathom with all the energy of his intellect, things terrestrial as well as things celestial. (Lectures on Calvinism, 125)
Until studying Genesis in 2008 my worldview was more of a “I can’t wait to get out of this world” view. My worldview was one of Practical Gnosticism, definitively dualistic, living on New Testament epistles and struggling to figure out to deal with all the “stuff.” Even now I recognize that things in the world are messed up and there is a way to love the things of this world that proves a man does not love the Father. Many of the seen things are seen are passing away in contrast to the unseen things that are eternal. Our hope is in heaven, and yet it is a bodily hope along with a new heaven and a new earth.
The church through her preachers and theologians has degraded life, even if unintentionally. Christians are guilty of gutting what God said is good. We shouldn’t blame unbelievers first for doubting significance of human life or cheapening existence. Professing believers are the ones who use theology to belittle the evanescent bubbles of earth. When James wrote that life is “a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes,” he was talking about the brevity of life but he wasn’t trivializing the value of life.
We need to go back to Genesis. Genesis creates our beliefs about what men were made for, about the goodness of dirt and sunshine and seeds that grow into trees that yield fruit in season. We need Genesis and we need to pay attention to how much is in there. Genesis is not pre-doctrine, it is principal doctrine.
I was reading some reviews of a book that Ryan Hall recommended called Manly Dominion. Half a dozen reviewers loved it. The reviewers who didn’t had the same complaint. They could not believe how much the author read into Genesis 1:26-28. I understand that mindset, the worldview that produces such a biblical concern. But as we start our study, I am much more afraid that we won’t get out as much as God put in.
It’s probably going to take a month for me to say the kind of things we should look for, be prepared for, and get excited about in Genesis. Let’s get to it by considering six studs that frame our beliefs, though we’re only going to consider one of them today.
Human beings have a distinct and unequaled place and purpose on the planet.
Though we are part of God’s creation, Genesis reveals that we are the only part of creation made in God’s image (1:26-27). The sun is dim compared to our light, the oceans cannot roar like we can, no plant in any place, and no animal at any time compares with any man or woman, because men are made after God’s likeness (1:26).
The arms of a tree are not similar in value to the arms of a man. It is more important to save babies than salmon. Humans are not one or a million steps of mutation beyond monkeys, we are of an entirely different kind.
In addition to our prominent place at the top of the created order (and food chain), God has given men a purpose and calling unlike any other part of creation. Men are given authority over the earth, to have dominion (control) over fish and birds and bugs and animals (1:26). Men are to subdue (overcome, bring under control) the earth (1:28).
We are God’s image-bearing pioneers and innovators and stewards. Everything on earth is at our disposal. God has given humans, and humans only, the task of dreaming and designing and developing.
That means at least three things in regard to man’s relationship with creation. First, having dominion means we are stewards and shouldn’t fritter away or purposefully ruin our resources. But second, having dominion also means we have freedom/prerogative to use and create and and build and manufacture without getting panicked about our carbon footprint, and global warming, and how we’re hurting trees’ feelings and treading on animal rights. Driving hybrid cars, using energy efficient light bulbs, and recycling our pop cans may (or may not) be a good use of resources, but we dare not let it become our religion. God didn’t call us to save the planet, He called us to subdue it.
And then third, if our human task is to design and develop, some of use are setting our sights much too low and spending way too much time on the couch. We should get to work making something significant. Science, technology, medicine, art, and education are framed by God’s calling to men. Without Him, they are rotten, knot ridden studs that build a rickety building no one’s even sure what it’s for.
Genesis frames our beliefs about human beings, our place and purpose in the world.
As the t-shirt so memorably exhorts: There is a God, and you’re not Him. This can be staggeringly hard to remember at times especially since it is so impossibly hard to resist, clay pots fussing at the Potter.
[T]he only two mighty antagonists that plumb life down to the root [are God’s sovereignty or man’s sovereignty]. And so they are worth people risking their own lives for and disturbing the lives of others. (“Sphere Sovereignty”, 469)
There is no neutral ground. And there is also no uncertainty after Genesis 1:1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth .
We would do well to take the posture and pray in a way similar as Jesus did, “Not my world, but Yours be done.”