Welcome to you if you are new here in town or visiting from the weekend.
We are starting a new series today in the book of Genesis.
And this morning we'll be taking an overview of the first 11 chapters that we'll be covering over the next three months.
One of the things that we are trying out this fall is we have bought a bunch of these scripture journals.
So this has the text of Genesis on one side and a blank page on the other side.
So if you would find this helpful over the next few months, you can take your sermon notes in it.
You can take personal notes if you're reading through Genesis on your own.
There's some copies on the back table and there's some down on the bookstall.
They're four bucks each.
Just bring the money next week and put it in the offering next week if you don't have that today.
So feel free to take one if this would be helpful to you and feel free to use them if that would be something you'd like.
So 20 years ago this weekend, I arrived in New Haven.
Moved for the first time since I was three and I didn't remember that.
For me, settling into New Haven was both exhilarating and disorienting.
I was a first year college student.
At first, it seemed like I had huge amounts of free time.
And I was living in a city.
I'd grown up in a small town.
It was all very exciting.
But at other times, it also felt disorienting and overwhelming.
I remember my first night at college around 11 p.m.
I walked over to the Dwight Hall Chapel and sat in a dimly lit corner of the room.
My head was throbbing.
I felt like I must have introduced myself to 500 people.
On that long, hot, sweaty day.
How would I find my place among all these people?
Let alone in this fairly unfamiliar city.
I would drive around downtown.
I'd end up going around in circles because there's all the one-way streets.
And I couldn't figure out which ones went which way.
One morning, I decided I'd go for a run.
I thought I'd explore some other parts of the city on foot.
I got completely lost.
It started pouring rain.
I knew I wouldn't make it back in time for class.
I thought I was heading back to campus.
I was actually getting close to West Haven.
Thankfully, a merciful shuttle driver pointed me back where I needed to go.
Well, whether you've just moved to New Haven or whether you've spent your whole life here,
isn't this part of what it means to be a human being on this planet?
We find ourselves in a world that is both exhilarating and disorienting.
Amazingly beautiful and deeply problematic.
And we can ask ourselves, what does all this mean?
How do I make sense of it?
Where did this all come from?
Where do I fit within it?
Where is my life going?
You know, these kinds of questions set human beings apart from every other species that we know of.
Human beings long for meaning, identity, and purpose, and we don't flourish apart from those things.
Over the years, writers and artists and philosophers and poets have wrestled with these big questions of life.
But one of the texts that has been around the longest and that has consistently shaped cultures and societies, families, and individuals ever since it was first written is the book of Genesis.
For thousands of years, Genesis has not only told a story about our origins, that is where we came from,
but it also speaks to our identity, who we are today, and it even hints at our ultimate destiny, where we're headed in the future.
This fall, we'll be looking at the first 11 chapters of Genesis.
And week by week, we'll walk through these chapters and consider what they have to say to us today.
There's a blue card in the pew in front of you that has a schedule.
So feel free to take one home with you if you'd like, if you'd like to sort of read ahead and prepare for, meditate on the text that we're going to be looking at each Sunday.
But what I want to do today, today's going to be a bit unusual.
Usually we'll be staying close to a particular chapter or section of the text.
But today we're going to do an overview of the terrain.
So today we'll feel a little bit like going up to the top of East Rock or West Rock and looking at New Haven as a whole.
If you're new in town, it's worth sort of driving or hiking up to one of these outlooks at some point because you can see the contours of the land.
You can see the Long Island Sound on the south and the Quinnipiac River on the east and some smaller rivers on the west.
You can see the familiar landmarks, the tall buildings downtown, the tree-lined streets, the Yale campus, Southern Connecticut State, Wilber Cross High School.
You can begin to grasp how the city fits together as a whole.
Like the city of New Haven, the opening chapters of Genesis can be both exhilarating and disorienting.
On the one hand, these chapters are endlessly fascinating.
They've inspired countless works of art and literature over the centuries.
Stories that might be familiar to you like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, Cain killing his brother Abel, Noah and the flood, the Tower of Babel.
But at the same time, reading these chapters can also feel disorienting.
Now, in part, this is because these chapters have become the source or subject, I don't think they're the source, but they are the subject of numerous controversies and questions.
So let me just acknowledge some of the questions that are out there, some of the questions that you may be bringing with you as we approach Genesis.
So you may have questions about science.
How does Genesis relate to modern scientific theories like the Big Bang and evolution?
Now, this is a big topic, so we're going to take two weeks at the end of September in Adult Sunday School to address it.
So I'll teach one session from my perspective as a pastor.
Danielle Speller, who's a physicist, is going to teach another session from her perspective as a physicist.
We'll be talking about science and faith.
So that's one question.
A more scholarly question is a question about authorship.
Who wrote Genesis?
Now, the traditional answer is Moses.
And I think there is a very good case to be made for Moses playing a primary role.
However, many scholars completely dismiss that idea and don't even take it seriously.
Now, I won't try to resolve that question here and now, but I've written a handout, and it's on the back table, and you can take it, entitled,
Who Wrote the Pentateuch?
Just sort of overviewing some of the reasons why people think certain things.
And if that's of interest to you, I'm happy to discuss that at another time.
Here are some other questions.
What about cavemen, Neanderthals, and other early hominids?
How do they fit in with the story of Adam and Eve?
Where did Cain's wife come from?
If you know this, Cain's the son of Adam and Eve, and then Cain's wife is mentioned in the text.
Well, where did his wife come from if he was the son of Adam and Eve and there weren't any other people around?
Or does that mean there were other people around?
Did the flood really happen?
Like Genesis says it did.
If so, where's the lost ark?
More seriously, that was supposed to be a joke, the lost ark.
More seriously, what does it mean that God made human beings in his own image?
And then why did God want to wipe out the entire world that he had created in the flood?
So many questions, and all of these are legitimate, some more important than others.
Many we will address over the next three months.
But you know, if we immediately focus on all the questions that we bring with us as modern people,
many of which reflect our own cultural assumptions,
it's possible to miss the point of Genesis itself.
So I want to acknowledge these questions, but I also want to put them to the side for right now,
and begin by dealing with Genesis on its own terms.
So open your Bible to the book of Genesis.
This morning, I want to focus on three things.
Number one is the structure of Genesis.
How is the book organized?
Second is the audience of Genesis.
Who is the book written to?
And third, the main character of Genesis.
So first, the structure of Genesis.
Now, when Genesis was first written down,
there were no chapter and verse markers like we see in our modern Bibles.
The chapter numbers were added in the 13th century,
and the verse numbers were added in the 16th century,
simply so that it would be easier to explain to somebody else which part you were referring to.
But we do see in the text of Genesis a very clear and orderly structure.
Now, if you look in your bulletin,
in one of the middle pages in your bulletin,
I've outlined the important parts of this structure, the relevant verses.
But if you're looking at a Bible,
Genesis begins by saying,
in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
And in fact, in Hebrew Bibles,
Genesis is known by that first Hebrew word,
Bereshith, or beginning.
It's the book of beginnings.
And Genesis describes two beginnings.
So chapters 1 to 11, which we'll be looking at this fall,
describe the beginning of the world.
And these chapters have sort of a wide-angle, global view.
The rest of the book, chapters 12 through 50,
describes the beginning of God's people Israel.
Starting in chapter 12,
the focus narrows way into Abraham and his family and his descendants.
And you can see that these are the two major parts of Genesis
because each of the parts has five sections
that all begin with the same heading.
If you look at chapter 2, verse 4,
the first heading in the first part of Genesis,
it says,
these are the generations of the heavens and the earth
when they were created.
Then if you go to chapter 5, verse 1,
it says this same similar phrase,
this is the book of the generations of Adam.
Chapter 6, verse 9,
these are the generations of Noah.
Chapter 10, verse 1,
these are the generations of the sons of Noah.
And chapter 11, verse 10,
these are the generations of Shem.
In other translations,
these verses might be translated,
this is the family line of so-and-so,
or this is the account of so-and-so.
But in Hebrew, it's always the same word,
regardless of how it's translated.
And you might notice a couple of things from this structure.
First, the sections alternate between narratives, or stories,
and genealogies, or lists.
And this was very common in many ancient writings.
Story, list, story, list.
The other thing you might notice is that the first chapter of Genesis,
through to chapter 2, verse 3,
stands apart from the rest of the book.
So it's not just another section.
It's more like a prologue or a prelude.
As we'll see next week, it's full of poetic patterns.
It's sort of like a movie trailer that sets the stage for what is to come.
So Genesis is very intentionally ordered,
has a very clear and orderly structure.
It's thoughtfully arranged, not randomly thrown together.
And it highlights these two major movements,
the beginning of the world,
and then the beginning of God's people Israel,
through whom he would renew the whole world, ultimately.
So that's how Genesis is structured.
Second, let me speak a bit to the audience of Genesis.
In other words, who was the book of Genesis originally written for?
Well, I think we can definitely say two things here.
First, Genesis was written for the people of Israel.
In other words, Genesis was written for people who had already experienced
God's mighty power and rescuing grace,
and it was written for them so they would come to know their God better.
You might say, well, how do we know this?
Because Genesis is connected to the four books that follow it.
And it's always been connected to Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
These are the first five books of the Bible.
That's why they're sometimes called the Pentateuch five books.
They contain the early history of the people of Israel.
They contain the laws that the people of Israel were to live by.
And these books were written down and read aloud over the centuries
among the people of Israel.
So Genesis was written to help people who were already believers
in the God of the Bible to get to know their God better
and to find their place in the world that he had made.
So if you're a Christian believer today, Genesis is for you.
And Genesis is an invitation to behold your God.
To get to know this God whom you have begun to experience
and already have come to believe,
to get to know him better and to find your place
in the world that he has made.
But second, I'd also argue that Genesis is also written
for people who don't or don't yet believe in the God of the Bible.
If you don't believe in the God of the Bible,
I think that Genesis is an appeal.
Consider this God.
Now, why would I say that?
Well, the chapters we're looking at this fall,
in particular, are written in a way
that would have introduced the God of Israel
clearly and powerfully to anyone from the surrounding nations
who had different religious and philosophical and moral beliefs.
You see, the people of Israel never lived on an island.
They were never completely isolated from the rest of the world.
They always had neighbors.
The Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Canaanites.
Now, sometimes they're fighting them.
Sometimes they're coexisting with them.
Sometimes they're conquered by them.
But they're always interacting with them
in one way or another.
And each of these surrounding nations
also had their own stories
of how the world came to be
and how their nation came to be.
Now, there are three major stories
that we'll see in the course of Genesis 1 through 11.
First, the creation.
And that's really chapters 1 through 4,
how the world began,
and then how it all went wrong.
Then there's the flood,
which is really chapters 5 through 9.
How everything got washed away
and then made new again.
And then there's the Tower of Babel.
That word Babel is referring to the ancient city of Babylon.
Now, every one of these topics,
the creation, the flood, the Tower of Babel,
would have been familiar to people
from the nations that surrounded Israel.
So, for example, the Babylonians had a poem
entitled Enuma Elish,
which begins with a story of how the world was created
from unformed waters,
and it concludes with the building of a tower
in Babylon as a temple
to the Babylonian god Marduk.
Other nations also told stories about a great flood.
The Epic of Gilgamesh,
the Sumerian flood story,
the Atrahasis epic,
all speak about a great flood
sent by the gods as a judgment
on the human race.
So, you see, if you were living in the ancient world,
the topics that Genesis covers
and the questions that Genesis addresses
would have seemed very normal.
We might read Genesis and think
that some parts are unusual or strange,
but they wouldn't have seemed unusual or strange
in the topics that it is addressing.
So, Genesis was addressing common questions
that people had back then.
And I think if we can hear and interpret Genesis rightly,
we'll see that it also speaks
to many of the questions that people have today.
So, Genesis speaks to believers,
and it invites us to behold our God,
and Genesis speaks to skeptics
and appeals and says,
consider this God.
That brings us to the third point,
the main character of Genesis.
Genesis.
The main character of Genesis is not Adam,
or Eve,
or Noah,
or Abraham.
The main character in Genesis is God.
In the first chapter alone,
God's name is mentioned more than 30 times.
And so, before we jump into
any of our other questions about Genesis,
the first question we need to ask is this,
what is Genesis telling us about God?
God.
You see, what would have been striking
and distinctive to everyone else
in the ancient world
is not the topics that Genesis addresses,
but it's the God who Genesis describes,
who's unique and distinct.
As we look through these 11 chapters,
we're going to see three things
about the God whom Genesis describes,
and for the rest of our time this morning,
I want to focus on these three things.
First, in the first two chapters,
Genesis 1 and 2,
we see that God is the good creator
of everything and everyone.
You know, if you read these other creation stories
from the ancient Near East,
every one of them describes
the creation of the world as a fight,
a violent struggle between rival gods
or a manipulative ploy
by one deity trying to undermine another.
But in the biblical account of creation,
there's only one God
who is not full of internal conflict,
but rather who creates all things purposefully
through his word.
If you look at chapter one,
there's a repeated refrain,
and God said,
and then God saw that it was good.
In the other ancient creation stories,
the gods create human beings
to be their slaves,
to do their work
so that the gods can sit back and relax.
Mankind shall be charged
with the service of the gods
that they might be at ease,
says the Atrahasis epic Babylonian story.
But in Genesis, it's different.
First, we see that God works.
God is portrayed as an architect
building the universe,
and then as an artist,
creating it, filling it,
and then as a gardener, cultivating it.
There's a dignity to human work,
and God is not trying to stop working
by making human beings
to do his undignified work.
Rather, God works,
and so do his people,
and also God rests.
How does the creation story end?
Chapter two, verse one,
thus the heavens and the earth
were finished,
and all the host of them.
And on the seventh day,
God finished his work that he had done,
and he rested on the seventh day
from all his work that he had done.
So God blessed the seventh day
and made it holy.
You see, God rests.
In other words,
God has joyful delight
in the world that he has made,
and God shares that joyful delight
with his image-bearing creatures.
You see, the Sabbath is not just something
that only God can practice,
but as we go on in the Old Testament,
God gives it as a gift to his people.
He says,
I want you to experience the joyful delight
that I have in looking at the world
that I have made,
and even joyful delight
in the work that I'm doing in you.
You see, the biblical God,
unlike the other gods
of the ancient Near East,
the biblical God is not simply
a projection of greedy, fickle, selfish,
conflict-prone humanity.
The biblical God is not just a reflection
of the ancient cultures
in which these books originated.
The biblical God is distinct and unique.
He is the good creator of everything
and everyone.
You know, not many people today still read
the ancient Babylonian and Egyptian
and Canaanite creation myths.
Right?
Not many people,
pretty much only scholars read
the Atrahas' epic,
some of the other Sumerian
and Egyptian creation stories,
but billions of people
still read Genesis.
It's never gone out of print.
Around the world,
in different periods of history
and vastly different cultures
from where it is written,
people have found
that Genesis has a message
that is still worth considering,
still thought-provoking.
One scholar who wrote a commentary
on the book of Genesis
is Leon Cass.
He was a professor
at the University of Chicago.
He may still be there.
But he wrote this
in his introduction
to his commentary.
He did not identify himself
as a religious believer,
but he wrote this
in his introduction.
He said,
More and more Americans
are owning up to the fact
that something is missing
in their lives.
More and more of us
are looking for spiritual direction
and guidance.
It seemed like only yesterday
that the Enlightenment
overthrew the rule
of religious orthodoxy
and promised an earthly paradise
of human fulfillment
based only on scientific reason.
Yet today,
the enlightened children
of skeptics,
and he includes himself
as a child of skeptics,
he says,
We are discovering for ourselves
that man does not live
or live well
by bread alone,
nor by bread and circuses,
and that science's account
of human life and the world
is neither adequate
to the subject
nor satisfying
to the longings
of the soul.
So he says,
We need to reconsider
our present beliefs
and reexamine
seemingly rejected
or abandoned alternatives.
This includes,
he goes on,
a serious reexamination
of the Bible.
And he says,
The best place to start
is at the beginning
with a book known
as Genesis.
You see,
Genesis continues
continues to speak
to people
who are looking
for these answers
to these big questions
of meaning
and identity
and purpose.
You know,
maybe you've,
maybe you have come
to believe
in the God of the Bible.
Maybe you've had
an experience
of God's goodness
that has drawn you
to him.
Maybe there's been
an answered prayer
or a merciful intervention
or an undeserved gift
or just an unexplainable
but undeniable sense
that God is there
and God is real.
And Genesis is saying
that the God
you've begun to experience
is even greater
than you can imagine.
The whole universe
is a theater
of his glory.
Abraham Kuyper once said,
There is not a square inch
in the whole domain
of our human existence
over which Jesus Christ,
who is sovereign over all,
does not cry,
Mine.
Genesis says,
God made it all
and he is present
in it all.
You know,
imagine Moses.
Imagine Moses
standing in the wilderness.
He's led the people,
he's led the children
of Israel
out of slavery in Egypt.
They've experienced
God's miraculous power.
They've experienced
this dramatic deliverance.
They were once slaves
and now they're free.
And imagine Moses
reading the first chapter
of Genesis to them
in the beginning.
God created
the heavens
and the earth.
What's he saying?
He's saying,
The God who you've begun
to experience
who has,
in a personal way,
is the one who spoke
the entire world
into existence
and rules over everything,
who formed
and filled the earth
and rules over the nations.
Behold your God.
He's not just the God
of your little life
or your little community.
He's the God
of everything.
He's the one
who created all nations.
The good creator
of everything
and everyone.
That's the first thing
we see about God.
The second thing
we see about God
in Genesis
is that God's not only
the good creator
of everything
and everyone,
but he's also
the judge
of all.
And his judgments
are altogether righteous.
And we'll see this
throughout chapters
three through eleven.
You see,
Genesis isn't just
the story
of how God's good
and beautiful world
began to be.
It's also a story
of how human beings
mess things up
over and over again.
Of course,
it all starts
in the garden.
Chapter three
tells the story
of when Adam and Eve
ate of the forbidden tree.
And in doing so,
they were deciding
that the God
who had planted
the garden
and placed them
in it
and installed them
as king and queen
over it,
they were deciding
that that God
is actually not
very good after all.
And instead,
they decide
that a serpent
and intruder
on the scene
is far more trustworthy.
And then they decide
that they should have
the right
to draw their own boundaries
and be accountable
only to themselves
and that the world
would be better
that way.
But have we not seen
over and over
in history
that when every individual
insists on being
their own ruler
and judge,
drawing their own
moral boundaries
and being accountable
only to themselves,
social harmony
and mutual trust
quickly vanish.
Of course,
that's what we see
in the aftermath
of Genesis 3.
We see alienation
from God
resulting in shame
and distrust
within marriage.
Genesis 3, 16.
We see frustration
and futility
and work.
Verse 17 through 19.
We see pain
and agony
and childbearing
and continuing
the human race.
Chapter 4 begins
with a brother
killing a brother
and it ends
with a husband
threatening his wives.
Yes, wives, plural.
By the time we get
to chapter 6,
the verdict is
that the whole world
is full of violence
and exploitation
and every intention
of the thoughts
of the human heart
is only evil
continually.
Chapter 6, verse 5.
And there is no remedy
in sight.
And so God sends
a flood
to judge the wickedness
of the world.
Now as I said,
every other,
almost every other
ancient culture
at the time
had a story
of a flood
sent by the gods
to judge the human race
at some time
or another.
That by itself
would not have seemed
at all unusual
or controversial
to any of Israel's neighbors.
But in many
of the other flood stories,
the gods send the flood
for rather petty reasons.
So in the Atrahasis epic,
Babylonian story,
the gods get annoyed
with people
because they're having
too many children
and the world
is getting too noisy.
And so the gods
decide to wipe out
the world
so they can have
peace and quiet again.
Yeah,
that's what the story says.
But the god of the Bible
is not petty
or cranky
or immature.
Psalm 19, verse 9 says,
the judgments
of the Lord
are true
and altogether
righteous.
You see,
if you look
at God's judgments,
God's judgments
are always based
on reality.
Now,
Abraham Lincoln
quoted that verse,
the judgments
of the Lord
are true
and altogether
righteous,
in his second
inaugural address.
as he looked
upon a nation
nearly destroyed
not by a watery
flood,
but by a bloody
civil war.
He said,
this horrible war
that we have endured
could very well
have been
God's righteous
judgment on our nation
for 250 years
of slavery.
Now,
some of us
hesitate
to even suggest
something like that,
that God's
righteous judgment
could be manifested
in human history.
I think
many of us
want to be clear,
rightly,
that not every
natural disaster
is an expression
of God's moral
disapproval
directed at
particular individuals
or cultures
or movements.
We want to be careful
not to blame
victims,
and those are
important concerns.
The doctrine
of God's judgment
can be misused
in harmful ways.
But in Romans 1,
the apostle Paul
says that God's
judgment against
human wickedness
is manifested
in the present day
in part
by God giving
people over
to their own
unrestrained
desires,
by letting
sin take its
own inherently
destructive course.
God is still
the judge of all,
and his judgments
are still
altogether
righteous.
And when we see
that,
we might ask,
if human beings
continue to mess
things up,
like Genesis
shows us over
and over again,
if we continue
to spoil God's
good world,
and if God's
judgments are true
and altogether
righteous,
does Genesis
and the Bible
offer any hope
to people like us?
God's good
and the Bible
is not
God's good
because the third
thing that Genesis
shows us about God
is that God
is a merciful Savior
who offers
new beginnings.
see,
there are three times
that we'll see
in the opening
chapters of Genesis
where things go
way south.
First,
in the garden
with the treachery
of Adam and Eve.
God entrusts them
with such a wonderful
gift,
and they
betray God.
Second,
things go way
downhill leading up
to the flood
in the spreading
violence
and exploitation.
And then third,
in the ungodly
ambitions of
the Tower of Babel.
We'll get to that
in time.
And each time
God brings judgment,
Adam and Eve
get exiled
from the garden
because they've
spoiled it.
They've put the
wrong person
in charge.
The wicked world
gets destroyed
in the flood
so that the cycle
of violence
doesn't just
continually
perpetuate itself
over and over
again.
The people
at Babel
end up confused
with their
ambitions
frustrated.
But every time
that God
brings judgment,
God also
shows mercy.
Look at chapter
three
and verse
15.
God is speaking
after
what's gone
wrong in the
garden.
The Lord God
said to the serpent,
verse 15,
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.
Now this is
sort of an
verse that's
hard to
understand.
It's a bit
enigmatic,
but it's
basically talking
about an
ongoing
conflict
between
the deceitful
serpent
and the
offspring
of Eve.
But it
says,
he shall
bruise
your head.
In other
words,
a child
of Eve
would one
day
crush
the head
of the
deceitful
serpent.
See,
everybody knows
you kill a
snake by
crushing its
head.
And of
course,
the New
Testament
says that
Jesus Christ
is that
one who
has defeated,
trampled
down death
by death,
who has
killed sin
or overcome
sin.
And the New
Testament
says that
the deceiver
and liar
and enemy
of our
souls will
not ultimately
have the
last word
because Jesus
Christ has
come.
See,
one more
sign of
mercy in
chapter 3,
verse 21,
as God
prepares to
send Adam
and Eve
away from
the garden.
It says,
the Lord
God made
for Adam
and his
wife garments
of skins
and clothed
them.
Adam and
Eve are
sent away
from God's
presence and
they're ashamed
and vulnerable
in their
nakedness and
in his
mercy God
clothed
them.
Of course,
an animal
would have
had to die
for those
clothes to
be made
and eventually
God's son
himself would
have to die
but God
would take it
upon himself
to restore
the honor
of his own
image-bearing
creatures and
to clothe us
in his
righteousness
and to
call us
once more
his children.
So God
shows mercy
to Adam
and Eve
in chapter 3
and then God
shows mercy
to Noah
and his
family after
the flood.
You read
the story
of the flood
and everything
is getting
destroyed
and then you
get to chapter
8 verse 1
which is the
center of the
flood story
and it says
but God
remembered
Noah.
God makes
a wind blow
and the
waters subside
and then chapter
9 verse 1
it says God
blessed Noah.
You see on the
other side of the
flood there's
hope of a new
beginning.
brothers and
sisters Jesus
Christ is even
better than
Noah because
he brings us
through the
flood of God's
judgment into
his promise
his covenant
of grace.
And Jesus
God remembers
us in his
mercy and he
blesses us with
his favor.
And then we
might get to the
third failure of
humanity chapter 11
the tower of
Babel and you
might think man
three strikes
what happens
when you get
three strikes
you're out.
Right?
Okay God gave
Adam and Eve
another chance.
Okay God gave
Noah another
chance.
Tower of Babel
forget it.
Wipe them out
and done.
Maybe make
another universe
millions of
years later.
But no.
Once again
God chose
mercy.
Out of the
blue God
makes a promise
to Abraham in
chapter 12 and
says I'll bless
you and make
you a great
nation and
through you all
the families of
the earth will be
blessed one day.
I will take
your family and
your descendants
and I will work
through them to
renew the whole
world.
You see the God
who made the
world and called
it good has not
abandoned his
creation.
God hasn't given
up on us.
Genesis isn't
just about
what God did
long ago to
get everything
started.
No.
Genesis shows
us that the God
of the Bible is a
God of new
beginnings.
It's not just
that God can start
with nothing.
With a
formless and
empty template
and build it up
and fill it up
and make it
into everything
that we see
today.
It's that God
can start with
broken people
who have been
twisted by sin
and hurt
and who have
hurt others
and God can
renew us
through his
son Jesus
Christ.
He can make
us even
better than
new.
2 Corinthians
4 verse 6
said God
who said
let light
shine out
of darkness
has made
his light
shine in
our hearts
to give
us the
light of
the knowledge
of the
glory of
God
in the
face of
Jesus
Christ.
See we
see that
God is the
good creator
of everyone
and everything
we see that
God is the
judge and
his judgments
are altogether
righteous but
we also see
that he is a
merciful savior
who offers a
new beginning.
What's your
anchor in
this world
in this
exhilarating
and disorienting
world?
Where are you
looking to find
meaning and
identity and
purpose that
lasts?
I pray that you
would find your
anchor in the
character of
this God.
Let's pray.
God we
praise you
that you
are the
good God
whose mercy
is over all
that you
have made.
We praise
you that you
are a just
God.
Your
judgments are
true and
altogether
righteous.
We thank you
for the mercy
and grace that
you've shown us
in sending your
son Jesus
Christ.
We thank you
Lord for those
words that if
anyone is in
Christ there is
a new creation.
The old has
gone and the
new has come.
Lord we pray
today.
We pray that as
we look into the
book of Genesis
this fall we
pray as we go
throughout this
week ahead of
us that we
would be anchored
in these truths
about who you
are.
We pray Lord
that where we
need your mercy
and grace for a
new beginning
would you pour
that into our
hearts and
lives and
relationships.
Lord would we
know that the
same power that
spoke the world
into existence
and the same
power that raised
Jesus Christ from
the dead is at
work in all who
believe in Christ.
Lord would you
strengthen and
renew us for the
sake of your son
Jesus Christ we
pray.
Amen.