I am regularly frustrated by commentary endings, and I have a similar frustration with most biographies I read as well. After spending so many hours studying a book of the Bible together with a commentator, understanding that the commentary writer himself has spent many hours studying and then writing his contribution, shouldn’t he offer some final thoughts? I suppose most of the book’s overview and purpose come while introducing rather than summarizing the book, but can nothing be corroborated better by the end? Is there nothing to celebrate? No more informed motivation for responding to the word of the Lord?

I suppose it is the preacher in me, but I certainly believe that some lessons learned looking back are appropriate before moving on to the next study. The history of redemption is not finished at the end of Genesis 50 by any stretch, but Genesis opens the story and deserves attention due to the trajectory it sets. So I am both excited to be done studying through it, and also to have one more wack with it.

I’ve been soaking in the juices of Genesis since the summer of 2008. I’d read it a number of times before and since, but really started marinating in it nine years ago. I wanted to study and teach Genesis for a variety of reasons, though initially it had a lot to do with simply wanting more exposure to the Old Testament. I was hearing an almost exclusive diet of New Testament teaching, and so were the sheep I was shepherding. After going through Ecclesiastes, Genesis seemed like the logical place to start for Old Testament narrative.

It also seemed like Genesis would be profitable for sake of equipping believers with the foundations of a world- and life-view. Even more perhaps in 2017 than in 2008, our culture is quite confused about origins and purpose, gender, relationships, morality, and “God.” To start at the beginning with what the Creator says about His creation, including us humans, sounded profitable for teaching.

There are certainly many cultural problems that Genesis addresses, but once we got into it I realized that there are also Christian cultural problems that Genesis rebukes and reproves. There are problems “out there,” in the world, but we have a lot of problems “in here,” in the church. Little did I know how much I needed to change. It may be impossible to estimate how many things are different in my own thinking, and how many things are just different now. My life is different, which has an effect on everywhere I take my life, including preaching.

The Bible is profitable for teaching, rebuke, reproof, and training in righteousness, and Genesis is the genesis of that. This morning’s message is not just a summary what Genesis teaches, but what Genesis calls us to repent from. Is it possible that no book of the Bible more convicting? Even for Bible-loving believers there are a number of foundation level problems that we must deal with, not just footnote problems. Though the word “repent” isn’t found in Genesis, here are five final calls to it.

Repent from Dualism.

As the apostle Peter once wrote, “I think it right, as long as I am in this body, to stir you up by way of reminder.” And C. S. Lewis wrote,

The key to my books is Donne’s maxim, “The heresies that men leave are hated most.” The things I assert most vigorously are those that I resisted long and accepted late.

Reminders are in order for those who, like myself, accepted dualism long and have only come to resist it late. By “dualism” I mean someone who disregards, if not despises, the things of earth in favor of spiritual or heavenly things. I didn’t think I was a dualist, certainly not to the extent some dualists have gone to of denying that God was born a man, that the body of Jesus must have been something like a hologram because God would never soil Himself by taking on flesh. But beyond that, I considered it a virtue that I spent as little time thinking about planet life as possible. This “virtue” of mine was sin, and it was ironically a failure to read the very Book I professed was driving my perspective.

Theology is the study of God, His attributes and His works. To know God is to know what He is like, and also to know what He likes. What does God care about? Before Genesis 1:1, what did He want to do with all His omniscience and omnipotence? He did eventually give us a Book, and He approves the solas and the ordo salutis. But first He made the heavens and the earth, the sun and the moon and the stars, birds and bugs and bovine, and male and female bodies. He does not disregard or despise the things of earth, He created them. The Incarnation affirms His stake in this world, but Genesis establishes it.

It is not only the first couple chapters that demonstrate God’s love of the world. God promised the patriarchs kids and land. The psalmists can’t stop singing about creation as a source of wonder and gratitude. Didn’t they know that those things don’t matter? No, it is us who have failed to see that they do matter, to God.

Repent from Neutrality.

I grew up thinking, and carried such thinking through Bible college and seminary well into my married, parenting, pastoral life, that a large part of the world was neutral, meaning that people could do a lot of things and participate in culture and society without each thing being “for” or “against” God. I believed some subjects, say Math, belonged to every human equally regardless of his religion, and that some places, say Government, had universal principles that could be acknowledged by anyone, Christian or not. I denied that everyone had an agenda, let alone a religious agenda.

That is naive. It is also idolatry, and so requires repentance. It’s idolatry because did God say that some things are moral and some things are neutral? Did he say that there are two sides and also a large middle where soldiers from either side can spend time in a shared territory? No, the God of creation did not say that, the “god” of secularism said that. Humans said that, so that they could pretend that a big portion of their life did not require account to God. There is always a god demanding recognition whether he encourages his followers to call him god or not.

From the first day sin existed on earth God said that there would be two sides, two seeds, and enmity between them.

”I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.”
(Genesis 3:15 ESV)

Neutrality doesn’t exist because the “great dragon…that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world” (Revelation 12:9) exists. We might wish for a space without battle, but we are wrong to ignore the fight or resent it. We must fight. No neutrality doesn’t mean that believers and unbelievers can’t ever agree on anything, but they can’t agree with a consistent why. There is no neutrality in Netflix (entertainment), school (education), barber shop or the mall (appearance), Whole Foods (economics and consumption and environmentalism), or the your messages app on your phone (communication).

Repent from Isolation.

I like being right, being biblical. One of the temptations for that sort of person is being “right” all by himself, which is not right. I’m not talking about Athanasius standing by himself contra munda against heresy in one particular situation, I’m talking about turning everyone around you into a heretic so that you can be like Athanasius all the time. You might get into a situation where you need to follow his example, but it probably won’t be with your wife. And even then, the goal of truth is relationship not being right.

God made us for relationship. God did not make us for quiet times, though meditating on His Word is required, in order to obey it and be fruitful, which is not measured by increased minutes of quiet time the next day. God is not the ultimate sentence, He is the ultimate Father.

I did not expect Genesis to challenge my application of the Trinity. God the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are not named as such so early in Scripture, but the plural pronouns in Genesis 1:26 where He discusses with Himself the plan to make “man” who would be “them,” and the poetic celebration of His “image” in “male and female” in verse 27, and the mandate for them to “multiply” in verse 28, and the picture-in-picture of how God taught Adam it was “not good that the man should be alone” in chapter 2, means that part of what it means to bear God’s likeness is to be in relationship.

In Genesis that looks like spouse then kids, extended by application to neighbors, nation, and for us today, also in the church. It may be easier to see this sin in the twenty-something year-old gamer disconnected from the household, but it may be worse in the disconnected truth-tube because he sees his isolation as a virtue.

Repent from Identity Crisis.

As I said when we started studying Genesis together, 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 for the meaning of life 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.

Gender? There are only two, and one is given to you, and it’s not hard to tell. Sexual boundaries? Sex is good in marriage, so says God. But outside of that heterosexual two becoming a monogamous one in permanent covenant, remember God’s revelation at the Flood, and again at Sodom and Gomorrah. Work? It’s a key part of bearing God’s image. But work to make a name for yourself rather than work in God’s likeness? Reread about Babel. Trying to make ourselves what we want to be is not like being all we can be.

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 pretend to make the world however she wanted. To complain about the meaninglessness of life is a failure to submit, like trying to drive a car on turned on its roof with the wheels in the air and wondering why you can’t seem to get anywhere.

Repent from Unthankfulness.

Like the word repent, no variant of “thanks” is found in Genesis. And yet perhaps the first thing required by God of Adam was not avoiding eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, it was gratitude. The narrative urges us to see the process: God made, God gave, God said it was all good, so man should give thanks. On the sixth day “God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.” The sun and the seasons, the fish and the flying creatures, the garden and the plants and trees with fruit, the livestock and creeping things were all gifts to man. The woman was “brought” by God and given to the man. The blessing and the calling to fill the earth and subdue it were endowments.

This is why Paul wrote: “For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving” (1 Timothy 4:4).

This was the worst part of my public school education: God wasn’t denied (as He is by the Federal gods of diversity today), He was irrelevant. As Jonathan likes to point out especially around Thanksgiving, who are all these people giving thanks to?

Also under this sin is boredom. Whether it is the of construction and clouds and cows, athletics and art, what excuse do we have for despising what “God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth” (1 Timothy 4:3)?

Conclusion

There are additional important things in Genesis. For example, repent from pride; self-absorption destroys. See Satan, Adam, Cain, et cetera. Humbling comes to those that God chooses to be His own: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph.

Genesis is not mostly profitable for creation apologetics. It is a view of God and humanity. It is a call to adore God and imitate Him on earth.

The glory of man is His submissive likeness to God. This is man’s only glory, it is weighty glory, and it is visible in his relationships and his responsibilities. Any rights man has are given to him by the Creator (as our U.S. Constitution acknowledges), and those givens come with standards. The same God who made us in His likeness also made a place where He’d like for us to show it.

The glory of God is His sovereign grace to man. This is not God’s only glory, since He was glorious before Genesis 1:1 and also displays His glory in the heavens and earth. But His grace is a preeminent part of His glory. Creation, Fall, Redemption. What kind of God is God? Generous Creator. Holy Judge (flood). Patient Savior.

This terrestrial ball is a world of glory and repentance. There was banquet, romance, dance, glory, then sin brought want, estrangement, pain, death. The only way to return to glory starts with repentance.

I pray that the fruit of repentance continues to grow in our lives. I also pray that the fruit of the next generation would include their growing up with a different set of worldview assumptions; they can repent from other things. Whether touched by the LORD through Genesis with a limp or skip, may we not be the same on earth.

Let every kindred, every tribe on this terrestrial ball
To Him all majesty ascribe, and crown Him Lord of all