Genesis
Well, we’re pretty sure that it didn’t go just like that. So the question is, then how did it go? Turn in your Bibles to Genesis chapter 1.
What we are going to try to do in our time together is cover the book of Genesis—the book of beginnings—that covers the creation account of humanity all the way through until the people of God, the nation of Israel, end up in Egypt. We’re going to cover a span of what some suggest could be 2,500 years from beginning to end, and we’re going to cover it via chart.
Now, we’re going to challenge you to do something here in this Generations series that we’ve never done before, and that is to get ahead of us a little bit in terms of downloading some content and coming prepared for each of our services. We are going to be doing some heavy lifting as a teaching team and putting information online—both charts and some additional additive information—from a “good, better, best” standpoint.
“Good” is if you just want to come because you’re a guest, you just stumbled into one of our campuses or church plants, and here you are. Great! Just show up, watch, leave, and hopefully we don’t put you to sleep. “Better” is to print something out or look at it on your phone; even if you don’t take a note, at least you’re looking at the same document I’ll be teaching from. “Best” would be to print it out, come ready to go, lean in, take some notes, and really enter into the series. If you will do that, what we’ll be able to do when we close the series is give you a full understanding, from Genesis to Revelation, of what the plan of God was from beginning to end.
The charts will be available online by the close of the workday on Wednesday to make them available not only for midweek, but also to give people who are coming on a Sunday an opportunity to download them. If you haven’t done that, you can get them on our website. If you go to thewellcommunity.org, click on the media tab, there’s a Bible Charts link there. On the homepage, there’s a big Generations banner you can click on, and it is in the app as well.
The Planks of Genesis: Chapters 1–11
The book of Genesis was written by Moses. It is important to note how this works out contextually. The nation of Israel ends up in Egypt by the close of Genesis, stays there for 430 years, and then gets released out of Egypt in the book of Exodus. While wandering in the Judean wilderness for 40 years, Moses begins to write down their lineage and their heritage. What Moses is capturing for us in Genesis is a family tree, giving them anchors: Here is where you came from. Here is how you began.
We have the book of Genesis divided up primarily into two major sections. Chapters 1 through 11 are the “planks,” and chapters 12 and following are the “patriarchs.”
In chapters 1 through 11, it is very difficult to get an accurate chronological marker. There is a lot of debate: Is the Earth millions of years old? Is it thousands of years old? People argue about that until they’re blue in the face. They write papers that use words I don’t even know how to pronounce, and at the end of the day, I fear that we miss the point completely of why the book of Genesis was written.
Chapter 1 is ultimately about God. Look at how the book begins:
Genesis 1:1 (NASB)
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
The book is about Him. Chapter 1 specifically focuses on God, giving a six-day account of creation. He uses the specific Hebrew word yom for day, which means a specified period of time. When preceded by a numerical prefix, it typically means a 24-hour period. You have the foundations in verse 1—time, person, force, space, and mass creation. It all started here. It did not start with a big bang. It did not start with evolution. It started here, with God, who speaks the world into existence.
As you walk through chapter 1, you see Him laying out physical forces: gravitational forces, electromagnetic forces, and matter. In verses 6 through 10, He forms the air, the land, and the sea, preparing this place for mankind. It is repeatedly noted that what God did was good. Then He fills it with vegetation, birds, fish, and animals, populating the crib He created for someone very specific. The crowning point on day six of creation is mankind—the foreman running things for the King.
Then God takes a Sabbath break. A 24-hour period is the rotation of the Earth; a month is the cycle of the moon; a year is the rotation of the Earth around the sun. But why a seven-day week? It doesn’t fit a planetary cycle on purpose. God is establishing a rhythm: mankind will work and then rest.
Chapter 2 is a thematic view of mankind. In chapter 1, He introduces the pinnacle of His creation, and in chapter 2, He shows us how He did it. We are finite; we have a beginning and an end. The creation of mankind was personal. God spoke everything else into existence—“Giraffe, poof!”—but when it came to mankind, God breathed life into him from the dust of the ground. Humanity was called to do two primary things: to be exalted and rule, and to be grateful and worship.
The Fall, Redemption, and Early Judgment
Chapter 1 is God. Chapter 2 is Man. In Chapter 3, sin enters the world. If you’re looking for a self-help book, don’t read your Bible, because it gives you two chapters of puppy dogs and unicorns, and then the wheels come off in chapter 3. Satan, a created angelic being who rebelled against God in pride, cannot attack God directly, so he goes after what is most precious to God: mankind. He challenges God’s word, God’s justice, and God’s love. Chapter 3 provides the blueprint that plays out in every single sin struggle you and I experience today.
When Adam and Eve fell, they tried to cover themselves with fig leaves. But God rejected their self-made covering:
Genesis 3:21 (NASB)
The LORD God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife, and clothed them.
God sacrificed an animal to clothe them with skin, marking the foundational concept of substitutionary atonement—that something innocent dies in your place because the wages of sin is death. But even before that, in the midst of the chaos of the fall, God spoke the first proclamation of the gospel:
Genesis 3:15 (NASB)
And I will put enmity Between you and the woman, And between your seed and her seed; He shall bruise you on the head, And you shall bruise him on the heel.’
Adam and Eve didn’t know His name yet; they just knew a Savior was coming who would one day crush the serpent and set the world free.
Notice also that in Genesis 1:1, the name used for God is Elohim—a plural noun meaning “majestic and many.” Later God says, “Let us make man in our image.” God opened the door early on to the reality of the Trinity: God the Father speaking, the Spirit of God hovering over the waters, and Jesus as the agent of creation.
Following the fall, two family lines emerge in chapters 4 and 5. The ungodly line of Cain produces corruption and rebellion, introducing polygamy through Lamech. The godly line of Seth proclaims the name of the Lord and walks in righteousness.
By chapters 6 through 9, we encounter the plank of judgment with the flood account. Wickedness covers the earth, and God commands Noah to build an ark. After the judgment, God establishes the rainbow as a covenant promise never to destroy the earth with a global flood again.
In chapters 10 and 11, we see the plank of nations, races, and languages. Instead of scattering to fill the earth as commanded, humanity gathered together in homogeneous comfort and built a pagan ziggurat—the Tower of Babel—to make a name for themselves. God scattered them by confounding their speech into various languages. From this dispersion came the different ethnicities and nations. Racism makes no sense biblically because when you trace the lineage back, we all share the exact same family tree.
The Patriarchs: Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob
In Genesis 12, the narrative shifts to the patriarchs over a roughly 300-year span. It begins with the call of Abram:
Genesis 12:1-4 (NASB)
Now the LORD said to Abram, ‘Go forth from your country, And from your relatives And from your father’s house, To the land which I will show you; And I will make you a great nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great; And so you shall be a blessing; And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth will be blessed.’ So Abram went forth as the LORD had spoken to him; and Lot went with him. Now Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran.
This Abrahamic Covenant is foundational. Most covenants, like the Mosaic Covenant, were conditional suzerain-vassal treaties: “If you do this, I will do that.” But the Abrahamic Covenant is unconditional. It was promised in chapter 12, ratified in chapter 15, and given a sign in chapter 17.
In Genesis 15, God instructed Abram to cut animal carcasses in half. In that culture, both parties would walk between the pieces, declaring, “May I be torn apart like these animals if I break this oath.” But God put Abram to sleep and passed through the pieces alone. God bound Himself to the promise regardless of human failure. He promised three specific things: land, seed (descendants), and blessing to all nations.
Abram came from a pagan family in Ur, yet God chose him by grace. But Abram frequently tried to help God out. Facing a famine, he fled to Egypt and acquired Hagar, producing Ishmael by human effort. Yet God made it clear that the promise would come through Sarah with the birth of Isaac, whose name means “he laughed,” because Sarah conceived at 100 years old.
God later tested Abraham by commanding him to offer Isaac on the altar. Abraham obeyed, and God intervened, showing that Abraham had finally relinquished control and trusted God completely.
Isaac fathered Jacob and Esau. Jacob is arguably the central figure of Genesis, and he was an absolute mess. He was a deceptive momma’s boy who traded a bowl of stew for Esau’s birthright and tricked his dying father to steal the blessing. Running for his life, Jacob met his match in his shady uncle Laban. Jacob worked seven years to marry Rachel, was tricked into marrying Leah, worked another seven years for Rachel, and ended up with four wives through their handmaids.
Yet, God did not abandon His plan. When Jacob finally left Laban to return home, terrified of meeting his brother Esau, he ended up alone at the river Jabbok:
Genesis 32:24-28 (NASB)
Then Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When he saw that he had not prevailed against him, he touched the socket of his thigh; so the socket of Jacob’s thigh was dislocated while he wrestled with him. Then he said, ‘Let me go, for the dawn is breaking.’ But he said, ‘I will not let you go unless you bless me.’ So he said to him, ‘What is your name?’ And he said, ‘Jacob.’ He said, ‘Your name shall no longer be Jacob, but Israel; for you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed.’
Jacob entered a wrestling match with God. God touched his hip socket and broke his self-reliance. Jacob’s name was changed from Jacob (“supplanter”) to Israel (“one who strives with God”).
Even after this, Jacob’s family experienced tremendous brokenness, including the tragedy at Shechem with Dinah, Simeon, and Levi. Yet God commanded Jacob to return to Bethel and remain faithful to the covenant.
Joseph and the Sovereign Preservation of God
Jacob fathered 12 sons who became the 12 tribes of Israel. Among them was Joseph, a dreamer favored by his father and hated by his brothers. His brothers sold him into slavery, leading him into Egypt.
Through false accusation, imprisonment, and God-given interpretations of Pharaoh’s dreams, Joseph was elevated to second-in-command over all Egypt. God strategically positioned Joseph ahead of time to preserve life during a catastrophic seven-year famine. When his brothers came to Egypt seeking food, Joseph extended forgiveness and brought the entire family of Israel into Egypt under his protection.
That is how Genesis ends: with God’s people preserved in Egypt, setting the stage for the book of Exodus.
In the Beginning, God
So what is the ultimate takeaway from these 50 chapters?
It is so easy to get caught up in scientific debates, chronological calculations, and speculative questions that we miss the central message. I remember talking with some Israeli friends while visiting Israel. I was asking questions from my Western, analytical paradigm: “Is a creation day literally 24 hours? How did God speak the cosmos into existence in six days? Did Adam have a belly button?”
My friend looked at me, smiled, and said, “Buddy, I feel bad for you, because you don’t get it.”
I asked him, “What do you mean? What is the point of the book?”
He said, “The theme of the book of Genesis is Genesis 1:1: In the beginning, God.”
When Moses wrote this account, the children of Israel were wandering in circles in the Judean wilderness on what should have been an eleven-day journey. For 40 years they walked, and they desperately needed an anchor. They needed to know: In the beginning, God.
Their identity was not defined by Pharaoh, by Egypt, or by their wilderness wandering. Their lives were rooted in the eternal God.
I don’t know what drives your life today. I don’t know what defines you or what wakes you up in the morning. But my prayer is that we would return to the anchor of Genesis 1:1. It started with Him. We are finite; we have a beginning and an end. We are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. But before all things, above all things, and through all things: In the beginning, God.
Let’s pray together.
Father, may we always be brought back to the foundational truth that in the beginning, You are God. Deliver us from being seduced by our own press, our gifting, our affluence, our position, or our power. Remind us that we have a heritage anchored in You. When life is chaotic, remind us of that truth. When life is good, let every breath, every sunrise, and every breeze remind us that You are the Creator and Sustainer of all things. We thank You that You were, You are, and You always will be. In Jesus’ name, Amen.