Exploring Genesis: Themes and Theological Insights

all right welcome so let&#39;s go ahead and talk about the opening part of the Old Testament the opening part of Scripture it&#39;s going to be really important to understand kind of how this stuff is set up in order to set the stage for the rest of the Old Testament really the rest of Scripture and so I want to walk you through kind of my understanding and introduction and and an explanation of Genesis and hopefully by the end of all of this you&#39;ll be able to see kind of the way that I understand Genesis how its kind of put together the coherence within the book itself and then really how it sets us up for the rest of Scripture and this is really important if we can get our mind wrapped around this and we can get our mind wrapped around a whole heck of a lot and it really sets the stage beautifully for understanding not only the rest of the Old Testament but also the rest of Scripture and as we know in the book of Genesis Genesis is really divided you know it&#39;s virtually unanimous the Dennises is divided in two major sections it&#39;s essentially Genesis 1 through 11 and then Genesis 12 through 15 now people can argue over where exactly do you make that that&#39;s stark division some people put it at the very end of chapter 11 some people put it right in well irregardless of where specifically you put that we are essentially still talking about the same thing we&#39;re talking about two major sections of Genesis the first being 1 through 11 essentially and the second being chapter 12 versus chapter 12 through 50 and as we and just by means of basic interpretive principles you know whenever you have two major sections within a book you have to ask yourself the question how are these two sections are they relate to each other how are they put together what&#39;s the relationship really what&#39;s the relationship the semantics the semantics and logical relationship in the two sections and hopefully by the end of this lecture you&#39;ll begin to understand how I understand the relationship between these two matrices and all this is know let&#39;s begin by talking about the glorious creation order Genesis chapter 1 verses 1 through 2 we all know this Bereshit bara Elohim at Bereshit bara hashem aia Bereshit bara Elohim hashamayim vehicle arts at NASA Miami at hearts sorry I&#39;m not exactly recalling the initial Ebru but it&#39;s often translated in the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth now that&#39;s the that&#39;s what&#39;s interesting about these a few things you&#39;re interesting about these opening verses you as you can see from the translation that I just read that comes from the NRC NRSV version of your of the English English translations in the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth now that actually seems to be a conflation of two of the two possible grammatical options you know it many of us talked about in the beginning and that really comes from the Septuagint really it comes from the Greek the Hebrew is is probably it&#39;s probably more it&#39;s probably more precise to translate it when God began to create or when God created the heavens in the earth and we don&#39;t really have that prepositional phrase in the beginning in the original Hebrew so the you know the NRSV does a little the something kind of kind of interesting and a little odd but all that to say you know this begins to set the stage for general continuity with the ancient Near East what do I mean by that if you read through the enumeration you read the opening verses of an uma English there&#39;s a lot of general similarity the images they&#39;re the words that are there while they&#39;re not precise we&#39;re not talking about strict exact parallels there&#39;s enough there to create general continuity and I think this is important because this kind of sets the stage for what&#39;s going on and and so these initial verses Bereshit bara Elohim that and then we have the the idea of being formless and void you know gods their darkness you know God is floating above the waters these primordial waters all of this is creating an image that reflects general continuity with the larger world view particularly when it comes to creation and how do we know this well we know this by reading the enumerators we know this by reading the Egyptian creation account we know this by reading all of these other creation accounts that are kind of there outside of Israel per view so the picture is it is difficult to describe but it seems to be in general continuity with the way the larger ancient Muse Near Eastern people groups a discuss the creation of the world and it&#39;s really really it what what defines the Ancient Near East of creation narratives are an absence of order the order is is absent at creation and then by the end of creation order is there in some form or fashion so that&#39;s how Genesis 1 begins it begins with the same general continuity the absence of order and then God steps in and God said and so we have this verbal command we have these commands this this verbal element associated with creation and what&#39;s interesting is there&#39;s no explicit rationale given or creation in the text we&#39;re just told that God said and as soon as God begins speaking it becomes fairly clear but God begins speaking and then order is infused in to the absence of order so remember the earth was formless and void God was there hovering over the waters you know it&#39;s just kind of this primordial goo if you will and then all of a sudden God begins speaking and that in and of itself is a powerful thought but probably even more powerful is that after God starts speaking order is infused into a otherwise chaotic world so as this unfold is as chapter 1 unfolds it becomes clear that the presentation is artistic and remember it&#39;s all moving towards this systematic order it&#39;s moving out of chaos and into order and as it unfolds it&#39;s becoming it becomes very fairly clear that the intention here is an artistic one ok one parallels day four they two parallels day 5 and day 3 parallels day 6 so what do you mean by that think of days 1 2 &amp; 3 as the construction of the realms the arenas if you will and then days 4 5 &amp; 6 being the the creation of the things that will populate those arenas so day 1 we talk about the creation of light from darkness and then day 4 we talk about the new creation of the heavenly lights night the mood and the stars in the sky are in the sky day 2 talks about the creation of the waters ie the sky and the waters below and then day 5 talks about the creation of the birds and the fish the things that populate the waters above and the waters below day 3 talks about the creation of land and then day 6 talks about the animals on the land and then oh yeah by the way it culminates with humanity and humanity there on day 6 is given dominion over all of it and these in these terms that are being used in the images that are being created when it talks about humanity&#39;s Dominion and being made in the likeness in these are all reminiscent of royal imagery and we know this by reading all of these texts throughout the nineteen eighties but when they talks about Dominion we&#39;re talking about Vice Regency we&#39;re talking about lordship and those types of things the culmination is of course day seven and this is when the Creator risks and notice we have that specific statement we have that statement of in and God saw that it was good and Godzilla was good but on day seven we see this we see the statement that cuts all it was a tome a ode Tomei ode it was very good and that&#39;s you know there is really no word for perfection within Hebrew you know Shalom but you know that&#39;s that&#39;s not really perfection as you and I think about it Tomei ode is about as close as it gets that&#39;s very good alright so day seven is the culmination this is the day when blessings are and pronouncements of it being you know the blessings are given and pronounced oh my ode and God is resting so we see actually a pyramid of importance and let&#39;s look at this so think of this at the very top put a triangle on top and think about it as as as a pyramid of important a one day for day to day five day three day six a day six be right there I talked about humanity being though kind of the vice-regent the vice Lord made in the image of human dominion over all creation and then finally we have God now speaking of the way the ancients kind of perceived the world you know this is a good this is about as good as images we have when it comes to um kind of visualizing how they perceive the universe how they perceive the cosmos and it&#39;s remarkably different than what you and I perceive the cosmos so you have this you know you have this firmament you have the firmament so it talks about creation of the firmament that&#39;s this thing up there that kind of separates the realm of reality from the spiritual realm and the waters above you like that and what that what&#39;s interesting about that for a minute is that when God talks about the flood coming in that firmament is going to be broken open so it allows the waters from the heavens above and the waters from below to kind of soak the earth in those types of them but you know this is this is about as good as we have this is about a good of a visualization if you will is the world in which they live so go ahead and you you know just go ahead and look over this and it&#39;s an interesting little slide and I spend too much time on it but I do offer it to you so proceeding with the creation narrative the first account and what I mean by that is Genesis chapter 1 the first kind of gives way to a second account and and and this is you know this is this is fairly obvious when you read through the Genesis 1 1 through 2 3 and then all of a sudden you switch in chapter 2 verse 4 and in Genesis 2:4 through 25 is very different than what we read in Genesis chapter 1 um and so God is more intimate we have we have the statements about creation be more intimate be more personal the words that are used kind of recalled the manual labor working with your hands and so you have this you have this kind of impression created in chapter 2 of God in there in the dirt with sleeves rolled up he has dirt up to his elbows as he&#39;s forming and it&#39;s creating humanity and he&#39;s putting the final touches on his creation this is in contrast with what we see in Genesis chapter 1 in Genesis chapter 1 God is more removed he&#39;s more calm there&#39;s not so much more there&#39;s there&#39;s really not a lot of intimacy God is speaking things are happening boom boom boom boom and I don&#39;t want to say you know robotic but it is it&#39;s almost more it&#39;s almost a little bit more robotic Genesis chapter 1 and this really is in stark contrast to what Genesis chapter and the question is you know how do we understand these differences you know oh do we have the old source critical historical critical statement of well these were two separate independent accounts that have just been arbitrarily put together or do we need to talk about things with a little bit more theological sophistication a little bit more narrow title sophistication and one of the implications it quite simply is this merely a juxtaposition or is it something more nuanced and I would and I would offer to you and I would suggest to you that this is something a little bit more nuanced yes I do believe the Genesis one probably existed independently was was was maybe perhaps later after Genesis chapter 2 but they were definitely composed at different points within Israel&#39;s history but they find themselves together for a specific theological purpose in Chapter two should be understood as the focusing in on a particular part of creation and we&#39;ve been set up for this because remember as Genesis everyone has unfolded it&#39;s building its building today 7 but right before we get to day 7 we have day 6b and that&#39;s the creation of humanity and that&#39;s where we&#39;re told that humanity is given is made in the image of God and given special dominion over all creation the humanity occupies an important part of this picture and so this makes sense if it occupies an important part of the picture in Genesis chapter 1 then why do we not do of course we should devote special attention to diving in a little bit deeper and that&#39;s what we have and it also sets us up for the rest of the story and it tells us that the rest of the story is about humanity it&#39;s not about the animal kingdom it&#39;s the birds of the air or the fish of the sea it&#39;s about humanity so there&#39;s this focusing in if you will so there is this term there is this corner that&#39;s taken and it begins to focus in on humanely but oh so oh so oh my is it specific because it&#39;s specific zoning in on humanity and setting us up for what is to transplant um and so it complements Chapter two complements the very good creation of and so as I mentioned earlier creation is more intimate it&#39;s completely orderly but there&#39;s this intimacy and connectedness because you know the beast in Chapter two in community there is this level of relationship that&#39;s that&#39;s there in Chapter two that&#39;s quite frankly just not there in chapter one and so we have this infusion of a different perspective a different angle on how to understand humanity is role within creation and it&#39;s all leading up to something and unfortunately that&#39;s something that it&#39;s leading up to is the tragic reversal of all of it and so as we move out of chapter two we move into chapter three and the wheels fall off very quickly and we could go on and on and on and talk about this path but the point of the matter the fact of the matter is is that choice was made and because that choice violated God&#39;s sole command don&#39;t eat from this there are consequences and it&#39;s from that one singular act of disobedience that all of the things that we saw that we&#39;re good all of the blessings are going to be reversed they&#39;re going to be flipped on its head and that will have catastrophic catastrophic consequences for Humanity and the story of God&#39;s creation as it plays out and speaking of those curses we can read about those curses in Genesis chapter 3 verses 14 through 19 and really these are curses that are more than just pronouncements these are curses that are going to define the cosmic the cosmos is existence it&#39;s going to define Humanity moving forward so instead of this intimacy between humanity and the animal kingdom enmity is going to be introduced between you know between humanity and the animal kingdom there&#39;s gonna be agony and danger a childbirth and this is very very significant because before the modern medical age the singular most dangerous act for the female for females it was shall birth it was childbirth so so childbirth becomes simultaneously the the the the greatest danger and greatest joy that is led that is laid at the feet of Eve and the females you know Eve was created her life me or her name means life and this was her thing this was her special thing this was her blessing that she was given she was going to give life and because of the choice of the fall that thing that was supposed to be the source of her greatest blessing is also going to be the source of her greatest danger talk about flipping things on a 10 there&#39;s gonna be a subordination between man and woman and we can read about this there are these curses and so what was supposed to be a very very kind and level relationship is avoiding excu and then man&#39;s chief responsibilities will be the source of Perpetual anxiety and futility and this comes from that phrase by the sweat of your face so sorry not a sweat of your face literally in Hebrew it says by the sweat of your face you will till the land and we think about this as oh yeah he&#39;s gonna have to work hard but it&#39;s not necessarily just have to work hard this is afraid that has this is a phrase that has wide attestation across the ancient Near East it pops up and royal literature all over from you gara all the way over to Mesopotamia and it means anxiety and so it&#39;s the statement that fear inducing crippling anxiety is going to define the man&#39;s existence and his working to the land remember he was put in the garden to till the land and there&#39;s this intimate relationship and just like Talbert is going to be flipped on its head so too is man&#39;s responsibility of telling the land that&#39;s going to be flipped on its head and instead of sitting back working and watching and guaranteeing that the land is going to produce its crop the man is going to do his work and sit back and just leeway to the point where it&#39;s going to Crippler you&#39;ve ever grown up on a farm on a farm if you ever ever grown up in a farming community you know the anxiety that comes with farming because it doesn&#39;t take much ruin an entire year&#39;s crop this is what we&#39;re talking about this is where this is what we&#39;re talking about when we talk about the gravity of the curse this is not just oh they made a bad decision when they paid the consequences this is the utter destruction the fundamental undermining a complete reversal of everything attended everything that was good that was intended to be good everything that was created perfect in orderly everything that was created as very good Tove Matt owed has now been radically and fundamentally undermine and in fact in many cases it&#39;s been flipped on its head this world is a jacked up broken system and it begins and were talked and worked and were initially told about this in Genesis chapter 3 verses 14 through 19 but then this is played out this has played out even more and it begins it begins with this tragic image of the expulsion of humanity and the word that&#39;s used there in the Hebrew is shelach which is the same word that&#39;s used in divorce context so you have potentially these images that are created through the word usage and you can hear the emotion of what is going on if you&#39;re an attentive reader and this is a gut-wrenching heart breaking scene to where God basically says you got to go you got to go and he sends them away and to just to rub salt in the room assault in the womb a little bit more because it&#39;s so tragic and the choice is so bad and the implications are so terrible God puts a cherubim at the entrance of the garden and some other thing we don&#39;t really know what it is flaming sword or whatever and it prevents anybody from returning into the garden what they gave up they what they what they gave up they can never return to and that is the tragedy and of course this is going to play out there&#39;s the full force of this explosion the full force of this reversal of blessing these curses that are enacted upon humanity and all of existence you know we&#39;re only getting a a glimpse of this and as Genesis chapters 3 through 11 through the rest of the first section of Genesis as it plays out we&#39;re introduced to more implications of choice so we&#39;re going to talk about domestic strife jealousy anger sibling rivalry murder Genesis chapter 4 when Cain murders Abel and that those actions lead to more cursing more hostility between humanity in the ground so by the sweat of your face you will till the ground is taken another notch there&#39;s of course ecological tragedies as well Noah&#39;s Flood the flood a global flood that wipes out everything on the earth that&#39;s an ecological tragedy and that&#39;s framed with a sense of judgment according to the biblical narrative and it&#39;s seen as Adi creational event to wipe the slate clean and what we have also is this interesting statement and I give you the verses right there chapter 1 verses 28 through 30 chapter 2 verses 18 through 20 that talks about the the intimacy and the connections between humanity in the animal kingdom but then after the course we read in chapter in chapter 3 verses 13 through 15 and then chapter 9 verses 2 through 3 we talk about this increasing anxiety this creasing hostility and animosity between humanity and the animal kingdom and by the time we read chapter 9 verses it&#39;s the dread of humanity as we twist on the animal kingdom we also have sociological and anthropological tensions um you know this is shown in Genesis chapter 11 with the Tower of Babel episode it details humanity&#39;s arrogance with the touch of urban criticism and as you read through that narrative you can see how humanity&#39;s endeavors to to be the best that they can to be like God to reach up to heaven and and and you know are causing problems with among you know within humanity themselves so we talk about language confusion we talk about the scattering of people all because they want to see oh hi and so as you read through Genesis chapters 1 through 11 you have to understand the snowball that&#39;s rolling you have to understand the spiral that&#39;s developing and as this spiral continues to go down further further further it&#39;s getting further and further away from the original intentions and those original intentions which were given to us in Genesis chapters 1 and 2 are gone they&#39;re no longer there they&#39;re no longer an option as we read these stories we keep getting farther and farther and farther away so this is the general spiral that I talked about it continues to pull a state of affairs farther and farther away from the original intentions but in in contrast to the spiral working against the spiral growing against the grain if you will there are a few things that pop up periodically that give us a sense of hope we all know about Genesis chapter 3 versus chapter 3 verse 15 it&#39;s called the proto board Evangeline of the first good news you know the there is some debate on whether you know what&#39;s that&#39;s referring to is it of specific messianic prophecy vic hamilton in his in his dick commentary on Genesis gives great attention to this and he wonders if it&#39;s specifically messianic or if it&#39;s more general and it just talks about good news in a general sense though is it specific to the Messiah or is it more of a general statement of potentially there&#39;s going to be some good news and that&#39;s linked with the verbs that are used the antecedents would with the subject of those words antecedents and the pronouns and those types of things it&#39;s a complicated grammatical discussion but it is in play nonetheless and so we asked ourselves but nevertheless whether we call this specific messianic prophecy or something a little bit more general the general effect is still there and that is to kind of cut against the grain in hello oh yeah by the way at some point in the future this is all going to change we also have the covenant with Noah and this is really really interesting because the covenant will become a very very important vehicle for the process of redemption okay and this is after the flood God comes down in promises to Noah and and and really to Noah and then the cosmos and humanity subsequent you know and so this is a global for a cosmic promise it is that he&#39;s never going to destroy the earth like he did again but this covenant this promise is made with a full of awareness in the context of which it&#39;s given so this promise is given within a fallen world there are still problems with humanity and so while God says I am NOT going to destroy the earth again it&#39;s it&#39;s done with full awareness with with what Humanity is in the fallen state in which they exist ultimately it signals that he&#39;s not completely done with humanity it signals that there is hope that there is a greater and more significant promise out there on the horizon we just don&#39;t know what it is yet and then also interestingly enough we have the genealogies that cut across a downward spiral in these sections so we read about we read about the family members we lead about you know so and so beginning so and so began its own so be getting so and so and this is really really important because genealogies within ancient Near Eastern texts serve a purpose they&#39;re going somewhere they&#39;re pointing something out they just don&#39;t exist who exist they are giving us the social location of someone and so the question becomes as who is that person why are there genealogies why are you leading us to someone who is it and why are they important and so we have things despite this intense downward spiral it just keeps going and going and going there are things that are beginning to cut across the grain so at the end of Genesis chapter 11 there&#39;s a juncture created by the overall movement and again this is really important we have to figure we have to eliminate from our mind and eliminate from our frame of reference that we deal with independent episodes within Genesis chapter 11 is that that is to say whether we deal with just the creation accounts for that we do with just the fall or just the flood all of this stuff folks is interconnected all of this stuff is moving in to an out of each other moving to the next thing moving from one thing to the next and so we have to understand that these first eleven chapters are a singular unit and they&#39;re put together delicately for a purpose and that purpose is to articulate the cosmic problem and that cosmic problem craves a solution make no mistake about it humanity and through their choice in the Garden of Eden screwed everything up it screwed a creation that was perfect that was orderly and everything that humanity experiences from that point on is its own dang fault that&#39;s the cosmic problem and then the implications of that choice are far-reaching and it uses into every crack and crevice of creation and so chapter 11 transitions into chapter 12 in chapter in chapter 12 needs the end of chapter 11 so you have this dovetailing effect but when you get to the end of Genesis 11 you&#39;re automatically thrown into Genesis chapter 12 the genealogical records create the next chapter 12 they tell us who Abraham is and how we ended up into Haran so you have this dovetailing effect when you read 11 the end of 11 and in this pool you have dovetailing this neat transition that&#39;s telling you you need to understand the transition try to figure out there and it&#39;s with this transition that we quickly realized that the narrative is now focused it&#39;s more it&#39;s even more focused we&#39;re not just talking about humanity and the cosmos in general we&#39;re talking about a specific person came from a specific place and that man&#39;s name is Abram we&#39;re not really told a whole lot about him other than he originates from or which is in Mesopotamia he goes up to Haran with the intention of getting to Canaan and what&#39;s interesting about this is that this migration that that if you know your map of the ancient the Fertile Crescent this Mesopotamia southern Mesopotamia moves up the Tigris and the Euphrates River to the you know to the top of that Crescent there where Haran is and then he&#39;s coming across that person and he&#39;s going to come back on indicator that general movement mirrors a vibration that&#39;s well attested across history outside of the pages of Scripture so Abraham seems to be a part of this amirite migration that begins somewhere in Mesopotamia and finds itself settling in painted so in some the creation creation was very good humanity screwed it up as I&#39;ve mentioned humanity it&#39;s humanity&#39;s fault and creation was fundamentally undermined the thing that was perfect the thing that was orderly the thing I was told my ode has been fundamentally or undermine but praise the Lord that God chose not to start anew he chose instead to redeem to buy back to restore and that&#39;s what redemption is folks Redemption is fundamentally a secular term it&#39;s not inherently theological rather it&#39;s been theologizing instead of starting all over again God says you know what I&#39;m going to stick with it and I&#39;m going to redeem it I&#39;m gonna redeem this creation and I&#39;m gonna make all things the way that they should and so this is why no is important no was important is because it really gives us that first definitive statement with that coven that will promise that God is going to say no I&#39;m going to bring everything back into order I&#39;m going to redeem that which was lost but nevertheless we have a cosmic problem and this cosmic problem runs deep and it affects the fundamental realities of human existence domestic reality Zepa logical reality sociological realities theological realities all of them are kind of demonstrated in a variety of ways that are being affected by this and his report and so with the introduction of Abraham we have a shift Genesis is screaming at us shift focus shift focus we&#39;re going in a different direction and so now with Genesis chapter 12 we&#39;re going to move on and we&#39;re going to introduce the cosmic solution you so if you haven&#39;t figured it out yet I believe that Genesis chapter 10 assess as a book as a whole is built upon this problem-solution structure whereas the first 11 chapters are articulating to us in detail this problem it&#39;s telling us about the problem it is how extensive and pervasive this problem is and then it&#39;s going to shift it&#39;s going to take a pivot it&#39;s gonna shift and it&#39;s gonna go move towards telling us about the solution the solution to this cosmic problem and that&#39;s Genesis chapters 12 through 15 and we begin with the calling of Abraham every we are as we&#39;ve already talked about just briefly in Genesis chapter 12 hits the ground running I mean there&#39;s not a lot said there&#39;s not a lot said it said about Abram as I mentioned we&#39;re just told who he is we&#39;re told that he was given a call and we&#39;re told that he faithfully obeys now he&#39;s called to leave everything that he knows and if we&#39;re if we don&#39;t have our tribal culture framework hat on we may be just we may just gloss over this by calling Abraham to leave his father&#39;s house and that&#39;s the specific word that is used in the Hebrew made up he is calling Abraham to leave his father&#39;s house it&#39;s it&#39;s not just it&#39;s not just a move folks he&#39;s calling Abram to leave his country leave his King dread his fathered house he is asking Abram to take away every safety net that he knows tribal culture exists as its as its as it surrounds the the fundamental the fundamental building block of tribal culture is the bay top the house of the father that&#39;s the oldest living male who lives and has the authority over the entire extended family and that right there is the core of your sociological safety net how you earn your living now you put food on your table how you raise your children how you interact with your family all of that stuff begins in this bay table and by God calling Abraham out of that he&#39;s telling him I want you to force yourself I want you literally to start new and start new and divorce yourself from everything that&#39;s familiar I&#39;m asking you to do it in a completely different so this is huge this calling is something that we cannot take lightly and for us if you&#39;ve grown up in contemporary American culture this probably does not resonate with you to the level that it should with this calling as dramatic and as intensive as it is its associated with the promise and that promises Abraham go leave the house of your father because I&#39;m going to make a huge nation and I&#39;m going to give you reputation I&#39;m going to give you a blessing that is what&#39;s associated with this calling those are the promises that are giving and so that sets the stage for what is about to transpire that&#39;s going to set the stage for how this solution is going to play out but also Genesis chapter 12 gives us some insights into some hurdles that are going to face Abraham so yes we are given that we are we have the table set before us Abraham has said okay this is what is you know we&#39;re told that Abraham accepts what is potentially given to him but were also shown the hurdles that are gonna work against the the realization of this promise he&#39;s got nowhere okay he&#39;s promised that he&#39;s gonna be given a huge nation meaning a large family people are gonna come from him he&#39;s gonna father a huge nation it&#39;s gonna give it&#39;s gonna give him huge reputation and huge blessing but there&#39;s one fundamental problem he has no children so how can you have a like an you have descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky if you have no children there are infant really there are infertile infertility problems that plague Abraham and Sarah and we read about this in Genesis chapters 11:30 so this is another example the dovetailing that I&#39;m talking about you need Genesis 11 to fully understand Genesis 12 and you need Genesis to meet and vice versa so there&#39;s this there&#39;s that linking there that you need though we also are told in Genesis chapter 12 to a bream Abram is prone to make suspect decisions you know out of fear he goes down into Egypt because there&#39;s famine and he lies and and in the course of lying he puts Sara at risk and he puts the promise at risk so these are important factors that are laid before us right there in Genesis chapter 12 we are aware of this blessing we are aware of this promise but we&#39;re also given insight into what can undermine potentially undermine that promise so by the end of chapter 12 we know that Abram or Abraham as his name won&#39;t be changed later is going to be a critical ingredient to the solution he&#39;s going to be at the center of it all this promise given to him is going to be at the center at all but we&#39;re not fully aware of all the details and those really won&#39;t come later until Genesis chapter 15 and following Genesis chapter 15 is the covenant passage where God basically comes down and says you know what I&#39;m gonna prove to you and I&#39;m going to demonstrate to you how I&#39;m so serious about this promise giving you what I promised you is that I&#39;m going to actually link myself to you by means of this covenant I&#39;m going to align myself up I&#39;m gonna sell mice I&#39;m gonna sell literally put my life on the line and take on a list of obligations for you and we&#39;re going to enter into this agreement but just as I expect things from you you can expect things for me just as you have obligations I will have obligations and we&#39;re going to go at this together I&#39;m not going to leave you flapping in the wind er though as Genesis 12 through 15 unfolds there are a number of obstacles appear so let&#39;s stay with that obstacle theme their biological hurdles I&#39;ve already talked about the infertility thing the infertility issue between Abraham and right we also have associated with this we have patrilineal unclarity now one of the one of the pillars of a patriarchal culture is this idea of inheritance and in subsequent and successive Authority where does that come from where does your heritage move through who is the next vein who&#39;s the next I&#39;m head of the household who&#39;s it going to be normally it&#39;s the oldest living heir but as Genesis unfolds we know that that&#39;s not always the case but before we even get there were unsure of who&#39;s going to be the recipient of this heritage yes even if Abraham and Sarah could have kids there&#39;s still this uncertainty so we&#39;re you know there&#39;s this idea that lot one of the reason many people believe that one of the reasons why Locke goes with him initially is because he&#39;s somehow in line they&#39;re related and then in chapter 15 verse 2 right before the Covenant is articulated we have the statement that eliazar from damascus is somehow in line to receive abraham&#39;s heritage then there&#39;s Ishmael after the Hagar episode and then there&#39;s finally Isaac so so we have this patrilineal unclarity that plays itself out and it adds to the biological problems with all of these developments you know all of these developments and how these infertility problems and these patrilineal and unclarity how they&#39;re all dealt with it&#39;s perfectly within bounds within patriarchal ancient very simple but it still causes problem there are also domestic problems do we have that game you know we have that competition over the heritage so when se is so so that Sarah versus Hagar Ishmael versus Isaac competition goes on then later on we have Jacob versus Esau and that&#39;s when the competition gets ratcheted up we have this issue of favoritism so you read through the the narratives of Joseph we&#39;re told that Joseph is Jacob&#39;s favorite and this causes problems this causes dissent within the ranks if you will and so these all of these things are adding up to potentially undermining is this this this the solution as it tries to unfold we have violence as well read about that in the Dinah episode and then probably most narak Lee we have issues of the world choices that the patriarchs seem to make from time to mind you know it strikes me as they&#39;re really trying to screw this up sometimes I read through some of these choices and I just kind of chuckle scratch my head and think you know what were you thinking dude but we have biological domestic we have issues of the will and we also have ecological issues you know famine famine is a huge ecological problem within this region and anytime there&#39;s famine folks there&#39;s the danger of death and if Abraham&#39;s family doesn&#39;t get food that family&#39;s going to die and if that family dies the promise dies with so ultimately Genesis chapters 12 through 50 is in a lot of ways the convergence of a promised future in the forces that will seek to undermine it just as Genesis chapters 1 through 11 you know follows this downward spiral and cutting against that grain are elements of hope conversely as Genesis 12 through 50 tries to unfold this solution there are things that try to work against the grain undermine it but what is the purpose of such a scheme why does the writer of Genesis you know and why do they ultimately put together a book that seems to kind of this up and down all over the place if you will why does not give us the goods why are we taking all of these negative terms why are we talking about all the junk and the obstacles that can potentially face face the community and so what&#39;s interesting if you read through the book of Genesis and you read chapter 34 which is the Dinah APIs ode when you read through chapter 38 which is the Tomorrow episode and these are really perplexing difficult stories to deal with and they seem to just kind of pop up out of nowhere but I believe their intention and I believe that their position within the book is there to demonstrate the forces that seek to undermine the unfolding of this solution yes God chose a particular culture a particular family to reveal his plan to reveal the the plan of cosmic solution who reveal the redemption of the cosmos it is going to come through the line and the country that comes from Abraham but that country that family the line for that solution is given to us warts and all we&#39;re not just given hey white washed account of things and how things were great puppies and unicorns hunky-dory no we&#39;re giving the bad stuff to because I think the writer doesn&#39;t want us to become naive he does not want us to canonize Israelite culture who yes God chose this particular culture but that culture had its problems as humanity was fundamentally fallen and tainted so too was that culture Israel Abraham&#39;s family was fundamentally tainted and and skewed and that existence that fallen existence constantly seeks to undermine God&#39;s plan but oh praise the Lord that God&#39;s power is more than that praise the Lord that the snowball keeps running keeps coming down the hill the process of redemption the continual process of redemption the unfolding of this solution continues to be brought forward it continues to be laid before us despite our best attempts to screw it up so by the time we get to the end of Genesis we know the family we know what the prize is but at the end of the Genesis there&#39;s still a problem and there&#39;s another problem because the family at the end of Genesis because of famine is actually on its way out of the promised land and it&#39;s on its way to Egypt so we know the family we know the promise we know where it&#39;s supposed to happen but we also know that by the end of the book they&#39;re not going to be there and so while Genesis ends with a bit of a cliffhanger it does enough to tell us how this solution is going to unfold but it also tells us it&#39;s such a way to keep us read and to keep us going so Genesis really sets us up it gives us the cosmic problem it talks about the the fundamental problem with our existence and what needs to be rectified and it tells us about the solution it tells the four general Avenue it tells us the general idea about the solution but it only gives us so much it gives us enough to keep us going lets us continue on and to move into the rest of the story and folks this is going to set us up ultimately for Jesus because that solution will not be ultimately fulfilled in a nation it will not ultimately be fulfilled in King David or as in King David or a Judean monarch on the throne in Jerusalem but rather all of these promises all of these covenants are setting us up because they&#39;re aligning us with the ultimate solution and it&#39;s going to be and it&#39;s with that historical reality that the full awareness of what that solution is and what it what it entails and what it&#39;s going to look like is going to be brought into focus and it&#39;s not until Jesus comes into play do we get the full focus and this sharp focus of what it&#39;s going to be so in sum Abraham&#39;s calling and promise produces the solution to the cosmic problem the solution to the problem is not without its obstacles we have domestic obstacles obstacles anthropological cultural biological host of obstacles that seek to undermine the promise in the solution but regardless of this to come the plan continues to move forward that ball keeps rolling and it testifies ultimately to the complicated interaction of human freedom and divine humanity makes choices and with each choice that we make there are consequences and yet somehow someway God ordains it and works through it and uses our ability to make choices to get us where we need to be together Square his plan and his solution demands so above all I hope that you got a lot to think about but again this this is very important for us to understand that this this book lays out the problem for us and it also begins to lay out the solution and it lays out the solution in such a way paint for us a trajectory and that victory will ultimately lead us Jesus

all right welcome so let&amp;#39;s go ahead and talk about the opening part of the Old Testament the opening part of Scripture it&amp;#39;s going to be really important to understand kind of how this stuff is set up in order to set the stage for the rest of the Old Testament really the rest of Scripture and so I want to walk you through kind of my understanding and introduction and and an explanation of Genesis and hopefully by the end of all of this you&amp;#39;ll be able to see kind of the way that I understand Genesis how its kind of put together the coherence within the book itself and then really how it sets us up for the rest of Scripture and this is really important if we can get our mind wrapped around this and we can get our mind wrapped around a whole heck of a lot and it really sets the stage beautifully for understanding not only the rest of the Old Testament but also the rest of Scripture and as we know in the book of Genesis Genesis is really divided you know it&amp;#39;s virtually unanimous the Dennises is divided in two major sections it&amp;#39;s essentially Genesis 1 through 11 and then Genesis 12 through 15 now people can argue over where exactly do you make that that&amp;#39;s stark division some people put it at the very end of chapter 11 some people put it right in well irregardless of where specifically you put that we are essentially still talking about the same thing we&amp;#39;re talking about two major sections of Genesis the first being 1 through 11 essentially and the second being chapter 12 versus chapter 12 through 50 and as we and just by means of basic interpretive principles you know whenever you have two major sections within a book you have to ask yourself the question how are these two sections are they relate to each other how are they put together what&amp;#39;s the relationship really what&amp;#39;s the relationship the semantics the semantics and logical relationship in the two sections and hopefully by the end of this lecture you&amp;#39;ll begin to understand how I understand the relationship between these two matrices and all this is know let&amp;#39;s begin by talking about the glorious creation order Genesis chapter 1 verses 1 through 2 we all know this Bereshit bara Elohim at Bereshit bara hashem aia Bereshit bara Elohim hashamayim vehicle arts at NASA Miami at hearts sorry I&amp;#39;m not exactly recalling the initial Ebru but it&amp;#39;s often translated in the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth now that&amp;#39;s the that&amp;#39;s what&amp;#39;s interesting about these a few things you&amp;#39;re interesting about these opening verses you as you can see from the translation that I just read that comes from the NRC NRSV version of your of the English English translations in the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth now that actually seems to be a conflation of two of the two possible grammatical options you know it many of us talked about in the beginning and that really comes from the Septuagint really it comes from the Greek the Hebrew is is probably it&amp;#39;s probably more it&amp;#39;s probably more precise to translate it when God began to create or when God created the heavens in the earth and we don&amp;#39;t really have that prepositional phrase in the beginning in the original Hebrew so the you know the NRSV does a little the something kind of kind of interesting and a little odd but all that to say you know this begins to set the stage for general continuity with the ancient Near East what do I mean by that if you read through the enumeration you read the opening verses of an uma English there&amp;#39;s a lot of general similarity the images they&amp;#39;re the words that are there while they&amp;#39;re not precise we&amp;#39;re not talking about strict exact parallels there&amp;#39;s enough there to create general continuity and I think this is important because this kind of sets the stage for what&amp;#39;s going on and and so these initial verses Bereshit bara Elohim that and then we have the the idea of being formless and void you know gods their darkness you know God is floating above the waters these primordial waters all of this is creating an image that reflects general continuity with the larger world view particularly when it comes to creation and how do we know this well we know this by reading the enumerators we know this by reading the Egyptian creation account we know this by reading all of these other creation accounts that are kind of there outside of Israel per view so the picture is it is difficult to describe but it seems to be in general continuity with the way the larger ancient Muse Near Eastern people groups a discuss the creation of the world and it&amp;#39;s really really it what what defines the Ancient Near East of creation narratives are an absence of order the order is is absent at creation and then by the end of creation order is there in some form or fashion so that&amp;#39;s how Genesis 1 begins it begins with the same general continuity the absence of order and then God steps in and God said and so we have this verbal command we have these commands this this verbal element associated with creation and what&amp;#39;s interesting is there&amp;#39;s no explicit rationale given or creation in the text we&amp;#39;re just told that God said and as soon as God begins speaking it becomes fairly clear but God begins speaking and then order is infused in to the absence of order so remember the earth was formless and void God was there hovering over the waters you know it&amp;#39;s just kind of this primordial goo if you will and then all of a sudden God begins speaking and that in and of itself is a powerful thought but probably even more powerful is that after God starts speaking order is infused into a otherwise chaotic world so as this unfold is as chapter 1 unfolds it becomes clear that the presentation is artistic and remember it&amp;#39;s all moving towards this systematic order it&amp;#39;s moving out of chaos and into order and as it unfolds it&amp;#39;s becoming it becomes very fairly clear that the intention here is an artistic one ok one parallels day four they two parallels day 5 and day 3 parallels day 6 so what do you mean by that think of days 1 2 &amp;amp; 3 as the construction of the realms the arenas if you will and then days 4 5 &amp;amp; 6 being the the creation of the things that will populate those arenas so day 1 we talk about the creation of light from darkness and then day 4 we talk about the new creation of the heavenly lights night the mood and the stars in the sky are in the sky day 2 talks about the creation of the waters ie the sky and the waters below and then day 5 talks about the creation of the birds and the fish the things that populate the waters above and the waters below day 3 talks about the creation of land and then day 6 talks about the animals on the land and then oh yeah by the way it culminates with humanity and humanity there on day 6 is given dominion over all of it and these in these terms that are being used in the images that are being created when it talks about humanity&amp;#39;s Dominion and being made in the likeness in these are all reminiscent of royal imagery and we know this by reading all of these texts throughout the nineteen eighties but when they talks about Dominion we&amp;#39;re talking about Vice Regency we&amp;#39;re talking about lordship and those types of things the culmination is of course day seven and this is when the Creator risks and notice we have that specific statement we have that statement of in and God saw that it was good and Godzilla was good but on day seven we see this we see the statement that cuts all it was a tome a ode Tomei ode it was very good and that&amp;#39;s you know there is really no word for perfection within Hebrew you know Shalom but you know that&amp;#39;s that&amp;#39;s not really perfection as you and I think about it Tomei ode is about as close as it gets that&amp;#39;s very good alright so day seven is the culmination this is the day when blessings are and pronouncements of it being you know the blessings are given and pronounced oh my ode and God is resting so we see actually a pyramid of importance and let&amp;#39;s look at this so think of this at the very top put a triangle on top and think about it as as as a pyramid of important a one day for day to day five day three day six a day six be right there I talked about humanity being though kind of the vice-regent the vice Lord made in the image of human dominion over all creation and then finally we have God now speaking of the way the ancients kind of perceived the world you know this is a good this is about as good as images we have when it comes to um kind of visualizing how they perceive the universe how they perceive the cosmos and it&amp;#39;s remarkably different than what you and I perceive the cosmos so you have this you know you have this firmament you have the firmament so it talks about creation of the firmament that&amp;#39;s this thing up there that kind of separates the realm of reality from the spiritual realm and the waters above you like that and what that what&amp;#39;s interesting about that for a minute is that when God talks about the flood coming in that firmament is going to be broken open so it allows the waters from the heavens above and the waters from below to kind of soak the earth in those types of them but you know this is this is about as good as we have this is about a good of a visualization if you will is the world in which they live so go ahead and you you know just go ahead and look over this and it&amp;#39;s an interesting little slide and I spend too much time on it but I do offer it to you so proceeding with the creation narrative the first account and what I mean by that is Genesis chapter 1 the first kind of gives way to a second account and and and this is you know this is this is fairly obvious when you read through the Genesis 1 1 through 2 3 and then all of a sudden you switch in chapter 2 verse 4 and in Genesis 2:4 through 25 is very different than what we read in Genesis chapter 1 um and so God is more intimate we have we have the statements about creation be more intimate be more personal the words that are used kind of recalled the manual labor working with your hands and so you have this you have this kind of impression created in chapter 2 of God in there in the dirt with sleeves rolled up he has dirt up to his elbows as he&amp;#39;s forming and it&amp;#39;s creating humanity and he&amp;#39;s putting the final touches on his creation this is in contrast with what we see in Genesis chapter 1 in Genesis chapter 1 God is more removed he&amp;#39;s more calm there&amp;#39;s not so much more there&amp;#39;s there&amp;#39;s really not a lot of intimacy God is speaking things are happening boom boom boom boom and I don&amp;#39;t want to say you know robotic but it is it&amp;#39;s almost more it&amp;#39;s almost a little bit more robotic Genesis chapter 1 and this really is in stark contrast to what Genesis chapter and the question is you know how do we understand these differences you know oh do we have the old source critical historical critical statement of well these were two separate independent accounts that have just been arbitrarily put together or do we need to talk about things with a little bit more theological sophistication a little bit more narrow title sophistication and one of the implications it quite simply is this merely a juxtaposition or is it something more nuanced and I would and I would offer to you and I would suggest to you that this is something a little bit more nuanced yes I do believe the Genesis one probably existed independently was was was maybe perhaps later after Genesis chapter 2 but they were definitely composed at different points within Israel&amp;#39;s history but they find themselves together for a specific theological purpose in Chapter two should be understood as the focusing in on a particular part of creation and we&amp;#39;ve been set up for this because remember as Genesis everyone has unfolded it&amp;#39;s building its building today 7 but right before we get to day 7 we have day 6b and that&amp;#39;s the creation of humanity and that&amp;#39;s where we&amp;#39;re told that humanity is given is made in the image of God and given special dominion over all creation the humanity occupies an important part of this picture and so this makes sense if it occupies an important part of the picture in Genesis chapter 1 then why do we not do of course we should devote special attention to diving in a little bit deeper and that&amp;#39;s what we have and it also sets us up for the rest of the story and it tells us that the rest of the story is about humanity it&amp;#39;s not about the animal kingdom it&amp;#39;s the birds of the air or the fish of the sea it&amp;#39;s about humanity so there&amp;#39;s this focusing in if you will so there is this term there is this corner that&amp;#39;s taken and it begins to focus in on humanely but oh so oh so oh my is it specific because it&amp;#39;s specific zoning in on humanity and setting us up for what is to transplant um and so it complements Chapter two complements the very good creation of and so as I mentioned earlier creation is more intimate it&amp;#39;s completely orderly but there&amp;#39;s this intimacy and connectedness because you know the beast in Chapter two in community there is this level of relationship that&amp;#39;s that&amp;#39;s there in Chapter two that&amp;#39;s quite frankly just not there in chapter one and so we have this infusion of a different perspective a different angle on how to understand humanity is role within creation and it&amp;#39;s all leading up to something and unfortunately that&amp;#39;s something that it&amp;#39;s leading up to is the tragic reversal of all of it and so as we move out of chapter two we move into chapter three and the wheels fall off very quickly and we could go on and on and on and talk about this path but the point of the matter the fact of the matter is is that choice was made and because that choice violated God&amp;#39;s sole command don&amp;#39;t eat from this there are consequences and it&amp;#39;s from that one singular act of disobedience that all of the things that we saw that we&amp;#39;re good all of the blessings are going to be reversed they&amp;#39;re going to be flipped on its head and that will have catastrophic catastrophic consequences for Humanity and the story of God&amp;#39;s creation as it plays out and speaking of those curses we can read about those curses in Genesis chapter 3 verses 14 through 19 and really these are curses that are more than just pronouncements these are curses that are going to define the cosmic the cosmos is existence it&amp;#39;s going to define Humanity moving forward so instead of this intimacy between humanity and the animal kingdom enmity is going to be introduced between you know between humanity and the animal kingdom there&amp;#39;s gonna be agony and danger a childbirth and this is very very significant because before the modern medical age the singular most dangerous act for the female for females it was shall birth it was childbirth so so childbirth becomes simultaneously the the the the greatest danger and greatest joy that is led that is laid at the feet of Eve and the females you know Eve was created her life me or her name means life and this was her thing this was her special thing this was her blessing that she was given she was going to give life and because of the choice of the fall that thing that was supposed to be the source of her greatest blessing is also going to be the source of her greatest danger talk about flipping things on a 10 there&amp;#39;s gonna be a subordination between man and woman and we can read about this there are these curses and so what was supposed to be a very very kind and level relationship is avoiding excu and then man&amp;#39;s chief responsibilities will be the source of Perpetual anxiety and futility and this comes from that phrase by the sweat of your face so sorry not a sweat of your face literally in Hebrew it says by the sweat of your face you will till the land and we think about this as oh yeah he&amp;#39;s gonna have to work hard but it&amp;#39;s not necessarily just have to work hard this is afraid that has this is a phrase that has wide attestation across the ancient Near East it pops up and royal literature all over from you gara all the way over to Mesopotamia and it means anxiety and so it&amp;#39;s the statement that fear inducing crippling anxiety is going to define the man&amp;#39;s existence and his working to the land remember he was put in the garden to till the land and there&amp;#39;s this intimate relationship and just like Talbert is going to be flipped on its head so too is man&amp;#39;s responsibility of telling the land that&amp;#39;s going to be flipped on its head and instead of sitting back working and watching and guaranteeing that the land is going to produce its crop the man is going to do his work and sit back and just leeway to the point where it&amp;#39;s going to Crippler you&amp;#39;ve ever grown up on a farm on a farm if you ever ever grown up in a farming community you know the anxiety that comes with farming because it doesn&amp;#39;t take much ruin an entire year&amp;#39;s crop this is what we&amp;#39;re talking about this is where this is what we&amp;#39;re talking about when we talk about the gravity of the curse this is not just oh they made a bad decision when they paid the consequences this is the utter destruction the fundamental undermining a complete reversal of everything attended everything that was good that was intended to be good everything that was created perfect in orderly everything that was created as very good Tove Matt owed has now been radically and fundamentally undermine and in fact in many cases it&amp;#39;s been flipped on its head this world is a jacked up broken system and it begins and were talked and worked and were initially told about this in Genesis chapter 3 verses 14 through 19 but then this is played out this has played out even more and it begins it begins with this tragic image of the expulsion of humanity and the word that&amp;#39;s used there in the Hebrew is shelach which is the same word that&amp;#39;s used in divorce context so you have potentially these images that are created through the word usage and you can hear the emotion of what is going on if you&amp;#39;re an attentive reader and this is a gut-wrenching heart breaking scene to where God basically says you got to go you got to go and he sends them away and to just to rub salt in the room assault in the womb a little bit more because it&amp;#39;s so tragic and the choice is so bad and the implications are so terrible God puts a cherubim at the entrance of the garden and some other thing we don&amp;#39;t really know what it is flaming sword or whatever and it prevents anybody from returning into the garden what they gave up they what they what they gave up they can never return to and that is the tragedy and of course this is going to play out there&amp;#39;s the full force of this explosion the full force of this reversal of blessing these curses that are enacted upon humanity and all of existence you know we&amp;#39;re only getting a a glimpse of this and as Genesis chapters 3 through 11 through the rest of the first section of Genesis as it plays out we&amp;#39;re introduced to more implications of choice so we&amp;#39;re going to talk about domestic strife jealousy anger sibling rivalry murder Genesis chapter 4 when Cain murders Abel and that those actions lead to more cursing more hostility between humanity in the ground so by the sweat of your face you will till the ground is taken another notch there&amp;#39;s of course ecological tragedies as well Noah&amp;#39;s Flood the flood a global flood that wipes out everything on the earth that&amp;#39;s an ecological tragedy and that&amp;#39;s framed with a sense of judgment according to the biblical narrative and it&amp;#39;s seen as Adi creational event to wipe the slate clean and what we have also is this interesting statement and I give you the verses right there chapter 1 verses 28 through 30 chapter 2 verses 18 through 20 that talks about the the intimacy and the connections between humanity in the animal kingdom but then after the course we read in chapter in chapter 3 verses 13 through 15 and then chapter 9 verses 2 through 3 we talk about this increasing anxiety this creasing hostility and animosity between humanity and the animal kingdom and by the time we read chapter 9 verses it&amp;#39;s the dread of humanity as we twist on the animal kingdom we also have sociological and anthropological tensions um you know this is shown in Genesis chapter 11 with the Tower of Babel episode it details humanity&amp;#39;s arrogance with the touch of urban criticism and as you read through that narrative you can see how humanity&amp;#39;s endeavors to to be the best that they can to be like God to reach up to heaven and and and you know are causing problems with among you know within humanity themselves so we talk about language confusion we talk about the scattering of people all because they want to see oh hi and so as you read through Genesis chapters 1 through 11 you have to understand the snowball that&amp;#39;s rolling you have to understand the spiral that&amp;#39;s developing and as this spiral continues to go down further further further it&amp;#39;s getting further and further away from the original intentions and those original intentions which were given to us in Genesis chapters 1 and 2 are gone they&amp;#39;re no longer there they&amp;#39;re no longer an option as we read these stories we keep getting farther and farther and farther away so this is the general spiral that I talked about it continues to pull a state of affairs farther and farther away from the original intentions but in in contrast to the spiral working against the spiral growing against the grain if you will there are a few things that pop up periodically that give us a sense of hope we all know about Genesis chapter 3 versus chapter 3 verse 15 it&amp;#39;s called the proto board Evangeline of the first good news you know the there is some debate on whether you know what&amp;#39;s that&amp;#39;s referring to is it of specific messianic prophecy vic hamilton in his in his dick commentary on Genesis gives great attention to this and he wonders if it&amp;#39;s specifically messianic or if it&amp;#39;s more general and it just talks about good news in a general sense though is it specific to the Messiah or is it more of a general statement of potentially there&amp;#39;s going to be some good news and that&amp;#39;s linked with the verbs that are used the antecedents would with the subject of those words antecedents and the pronouns and those types of things it&amp;#39;s a complicated grammatical discussion but it is in play nonetheless and so we asked ourselves but nevertheless whether we call this specific messianic prophecy or something a little bit more general the general effect is still there and that is to kind of cut against the grain in hello oh yeah by the way at some point in the future this is all going to change we also have the covenant with Noah and this is really really interesting because the covenant will become a very very important vehicle for the process of redemption okay and this is after the flood God comes down in promises to Noah and and and really to Noah and then the cosmos and humanity subsequent you know and so this is a global for a cosmic promise it is that he&amp;#39;s never going to destroy the earth like he did again but this covenant this promise is made with a full of awareness in the context of which it&amp;#39;s given so this promise is given within a fallen world there are still problems with humanity and so while God says I am NOT going to destroy the earth again it&amp;#39;s it&amp;#39;s done with full awareness with with what Humanity is in the fallen state in which they exist ultimately it signals that he&amp;#39;s not completely done with humanity it signals that there is hope that there is a greater and more significant promise out there on the horizon we just don&amp;#39;t know what it is yet and then also interestingly enough we have the genealogies that cut across a downward spiral in these sections so we read about we read about the family members we lead about you know so and so beginning so and so began its own so be getting so and so and this is really really important because genealogies within ancient Near Eastern texts serve a purpose they&amp;#39;re going somewhere they&amp;#39;re pointing something out they just don&amp;#39;t exist who exist they are giving us the social location of someone and so the question becomes as who is that person why are there genealogies why are you leading us to someone who is it and why are they important and so we have things despite this intense downward spiral it just keeps going and going and going there are things that are beginning to cut across the grain so at the end of Genesis chapter 11 there&amp;#39;s a juncture created by the overall movement and again this is really important we have to figure we have to eliminate from our mind and eliminate from our frame of reference that we deal with independent episodes within Genesis chapter 11 is that that is to say whether we deal with just the creation accounts for that we do with just the fall or just the flood all of this stuff folks is interconnected all of this stuff is moving in to an out of each other moving to the next thing moving from one thing to the next and so we have to understand that these first eleven chapters are a singular unit and they&amp;#39;re put together delicately for a purpose and that purpose is to articulate the cosmic problem and that cosmic problem craves a solution make no mistake about it humanity and through their choice in the Garden of Eden screwed everything up it screwed a creation that was perfect that was orderly and everything that humanity experiences from that point on is its own dang fault that&amp;#39;s the cosmic problem and then the implications of that choice are far-reaching and it uses into every crack and crevice of creation and so chapter 11 transitions into chapter 12 in chapter in chapter 12 needs the end of chapter 11 so you have this dovetailing effect but when you get to the end of Genesis 11 you&amp;#39;re automatically thrown into Genesis chapter 12 the genealogical records create the next chapter 12 they tell us who Abraham is and how we ended up into Haran so you have this dovetailing effect when you read 11 the end of 11 and in this pool you have dovetailing this neat transition that&amp;#39;s telling you you need to understand the transition try to figure out there and it&amp;#39;s with this transition that we quickly realized that the narrative is now focused it&amp;#39;s more it&amp;#39;s even more focused we&amp;#39;re not just talking about humanity and the cosmos in general we&amp;#39;re talking about a specific person came from a specific place and that man&amp;#39;s name is Abram we&amp;#39;re not really told a whole lot about him other than he originates from or which is in Mesopotamia he goes up to Haran with the intention of getting to Canaan and what&amp;#39;s interesting about this is that this migration that that if you know your map of the ancient the Fertile Crescent this Mesopotamia southern Mesopotamia moves up the Tigris and the Euphrates River to the you know to the top of that Crescent there where Haran is and then he&amp;#39;s coming across that person and he&amp;#39;s going to come back on indicator that general movement mirrors a vibration that&amp;#39;s well attested across history outside of the pages of Scripture so Abraham seems to be a part of this amirite migration that begins somewhere in Mesopotamia and finds itself settling in painted so in some the creation creation was very good humanity screwed it up as I&amp;#39;ve mentioned humanity it&amp;#39;s humanity&amp;#39;s fault and creation was fundamentally undermined the thing that was perfect the thing that was orderly the thing I was told my ode has been fundamentally or undermine but praise the Lord that God chose not to start anew he chose instead to redeem to buy back to restore and that&amp;#39;s what redemption is folks Redemption is fundamentally a secular term it&amp;#39;s not inherently theological rather it&amp;#39;s been theologizing instead of starting all over again God says you know what I&amp;#39;m going to stick with it and I&amp;#39;m going to redeem it I&amp;#39;m gonna redeem this creation and I&amp;#39;m gonna make all things the way that they should and so this is why no is important no was important is because it really gives us that first definitive statement with that coven that will promise that God is going to say no I&amp;#39;m going to bring everything back into order I&amp;#39;m going to redeem that which was lost but nevertheless we have a cosmic problem and this cosmic problem runs deep and it affects the fundamental realities of human existence domestic reality Zepa logical reality sociological realities theological realities all of them are kind of demonstrated in a variety of ways that are being affected by this and his report and so with the introduction of Abraham we have a shift Genesis is screaming at us shift focus shift focus we&amp;#39;re going in a different direction and so now with Genesis chapter 12 we&amp;#39;re going to move on and we&amp;#39;re going to introduce the cosmic solution you so if you haven&amp;#39;t figured it out yet I believe that Genesis chapter 10 assess as a book as a whole is built upon this problem-solution structure whereas the first 11 chapters are articulating to us in detail this problem it&amp;#39;s telling us about the problem it is how extensive and pervasive this problem is and then it&amp;#39;s going to shift it&amp;#39;s going to take a pivot it&amp;#39;s gonna shift and it&amp;#39;s gonna go move towards telling us about the solution the solution to this cosmic problem and that&amp;#39;s Genesis chapters 12 through 15 and we begin with the calling of Abraham every we are as we&amp;#39;ve already talked about just briefly in Genesis chapter 12 hits the ground running I mean there&amp;#39;s not a lot said there&amp;#39;s not a lot said it said about Abram as I mentioned we&amp;#39;re just told who he is we&amp;#39;re told that he was given a call and we&amp;#39;re told that he faithfully obeys now he&amp;#39;s called to leave everything that he knows and if we&amp;#39;re if we don&amp;#39;t have our tribal culture framework hat on we may be just we may just gloss over this by calling Abraham to leave his father&amp;#39;s house and that&amp;#39;s the specific word that is used in the Hebrew made up he is calling Abraham to leave his father&amp;#39;s house it&amp;#39;s it&amp;#39;s not just it&amp;#39;s not just a move folks he&amp;#39;s calling Abram to leave his country leave his King dread his fathered house he is asking Abram to take away every safety net that he knows tribal culture exists as its as its as it surrounds the the fundamental the fundamental building block of tribal culture is the bay top the house of the father that&amp;#39;s the oldest living male who lives and has the authority over the entire extended family and that right there is the core of your sociological safety net how you earn your living now you put food on your table how you raise your children how you interact with your family all of that stuff begins in this bay table and by God calling Abraham out of that he&amp;#39;s telling him I want you to force yourself I want you literally to start new and start new and divorce yourself from everything that&amp;#39;s familiar I&amp;#39;m asking you to do it in a completely different so this is huge this calling is something that we cannot take lightly and for us if you&amp;#39;ve grown up in contemporary American culture this probably does not resonate with you to the level that it should with this calling as dramatic and as intensive as it is its associated with the promise and that promises Abraham go leave the house of your father because I&amp;#39;m going to make a huge nation and I&amp;#39;m going to give you reputation I&amp;#39;m going to give you a blessing that is what&amp;#39;s associated with this calling those are the promises that are giving and so that sets the stage for what is about to transpire that&amp;#39;s going to set the stage for how this solution is going to play out but also Genesis chapter 12 gives us some insights into some hurdles that are going to face Abraham so yes we are given that we are we have the table set before us Abraham has said okay this is what is you know we&amp;#39;re told that Abraham accepts what is potentially given to him but were also shown the hurdles that are gonna work against the the realization of this promise he&amp;#39;s got nowhere okay he&amp;#39;s promised that he&amp;#39;s gonna be given a huge nation meaning a large family people are gonna come from him he&amp;#39;s gonna father a huge nation it&amp;#39;s gonna give it&amp;#39;s gonna give him huge reputation and huge blessing but there&amp;#39;s one fundamental problem he has no children so how can you have a like an you have descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky if you have no children there are infant really there are infertile infertility problems that plague Abraham and Sarah and we read about this in Genesis chapters 11:30 so this is another example the dovetailing that I&amp;#39;m talking about you need Genesis 11 to fully understand Genesis 12 and you need Genesis to meet and vice versa so there&amp;#39;s this there&amp;#39;s that linking there that you need though we also are told in Genesis chapter 12 to a bream Abram is prone to make suspect decisions you know out of fear he goes down into Egypt because there&amp;#39;s famine and he lies and and in the course of lying he puts Sara at risk and he puts the promise at risk so these are important factors that are laid before us right there in Genesis chapter 12 we are aware of this blessing we are aware of this promise but we&amp;#39;re also given insight into what can undermine potentially undermine that promise so by the end of chapter 12 we know that Abram or Abraham as his name won&amp;#39;t be changed later is going to be a critical ingredient to the solution he&amp;#39;s going to be at the center of it all this promise given to him is going to be at the center at all but we&amp;#39;re not fully aware of all the details and those really won&amp;#39;t come later until Genesis chapter 15 and following Genesis chapter 15 is the covenant passage where God basically comes down and says you know what I&amp;#39;m gonna prove to you and I&amp;#39;m going to demonstrate to you how I&amp;#39;m so serious about this promise giving you what I promised you is that I&amp;#39;m going to actually link myself to you by means of this covenant I&amp;#39;m going to align myself up I&amp;#39;m gonna sell mice I&amp;#39;m gonna sell literally put my life on the line and take on a list of obligations for you and we&amp;#39;re going to enter into this agreement but just as I expect things from you you can expect things for me just as you have obligations I will have obligations and we&amp;#39;re going to go at this together I&amp;#39;m not going to leave you flapping in the wind er though as Genesis 12 through 15 unfolds there are a number of obstacles appear so let&amp;#39;s stay with that obstacle theme their biological hurdles I&amp;#39;ve already talked about the infertility thing the infertility issue between Abraham and right we also have associated with this we have patrilineal unclarity now one of the one of the pillars of a patriarchal culture is this idea of inheritance and in subsequent and successive Authority where does that come from where does your heritage move through who is the next vein who&amp;#39;s the next I&amp;#39;m head of the household who&amp;#39;s it going to be normally it&amp;#39;s the oldest living heir but as Genesis unfolds we know that that&amp;#39;s not always the case but before we even get there were unsure of who&amp;#39;s going to be the recipient of this heritage yes even if Abraham and Sarah could have kids there&amp;#39;s still this uncertainty so we&amp;#39;re you know there&amp;#39;s this idea that lot one of the reason many people believe that one of the reasons why Locke goes with him initially is because he&amp;#39;s somehow in line they&amp;#39;re related and then in chapter 15 verse 2 right before the Covenant is articulated we have the statement that eliazar from damascus is somehow in line to receive abraham&amp;#39;s heritage then there&amp;#39;s Ishmael after the Hagar episode and then there&amp;#39;s finally Isaac so so we have this patrilineal unclarity that plays itself out and it adds to the biological problems with all of these developments you know all of these developments and how these infertility problems and these patrilineal and unclarity how they&amp;#39;re all dealt with it&amp;#39;s perfectly within bounds within patriarchal ancient very simple but it still causes problem there are also domestic problems do we have that game you know we have that competition over the heritage so when se is so so that Sarah versus Hagar Ishmael versus Isaac competition goes on then later on we have Jacob versus Esau and that&amp;#39;s when the competition gets ratcheted up we have this issue of favoritism so you read through the the narratives of Joseph we&amp;#39;re told that Joseph is Jacob&amp;#39;s favorite and this causes problems this causes dissent within the ranks if you will and so these all of these things are adding up to potentially undermining is this this this the solution as it tries to unfold we have violence as well read about that in the Dinah episode and then probably most narak Lee we have issues of the world choices that the patriarchs seem to make from time to mind you know it strikes me as they&amp;#39;re really trying to screw this up sometimes I read through some of these choices and I just kind of chuckle scratch my head and think you know what were you thinking dude but we have biological domestic we have issues of the will and we also have ecological issues you know famine famine is a huge ecological problem within this region and anytime there&amp;#39;s famine folks there&amp;#39;s the danger of death and if Abraham&amp;#39;s family doesn&amp;#39;t get food that family&amp;#39;s going to die and if that family dies the promise dies with so ultimately Genesis chapters 12 through 50 is in a lot of ways the convergence of a promised future in the forces that will seek to undermine it just as Genesis chapters 1 through 11 you know follows this downward spiral and cutting against that grain are elements of hope conversely as Genesis 12 through 50 tries to unfold this solution there are things that try to work against the grain undermine it but what is the purpose of such a scheme why does the writer of Genesis you know and why do they ultimately put together a book that seems to kind of this up and down all over the place if you will why does not give us the goods why are we taking all of these negative terms why are we talking about all the junk and the obstacles that can potentially face face the community and so what&amp;#39;s interesting if you read through the book of Genesis and you read chapter 34 which is the Dinah APIs ode when you read through chapter 38 which is the Tomorrow episode and these are really perplexing difficult stories to deal with and they seem to just kind of pop up out of nowhere but I believe their intention and I believe that their position within the book is there to demonstrate the forces that seek to undermine the unfolding of this solution yes God chose a particular culture a particular family to reveal his plan to reveal the the plan of cosmic solution who reveal the redemption of the cosmos it is going to come through the line and the country that comes from Abraham but that country that family the line for that solution is given to us warts and all we&amp;#39;re not just given hey white washed account of things and how things were great puppies and unicorns hunky-dory no we&amp;#39;re giving the bad stuff to because I think the writer doesn&amp;#39;t want us to become naive he does not want us to canonize Israelite culture who yes God chose this particular culture but that culture had its problems as humanity was fundamentally fallen and tainted so too was that culture Israel Abraham&amp;#39;s family was fundamentally tainted and and skewed and that existence that fallen existence constantly seeks to undermine God&amp;#39;s plan but oh praise the Lord that God&amp;#39;s power is more than that praise the Lord that the snowball keeps running keeps coming down the hill the process of redemption the continual process of redemption the unfolding of this solution continues to be brought forward it continues to be laid before us despite our best attempts to screw it up so by the time we get to the end of Genesis we know the family we know what the prize is but at the end of the Genesis there&amp;#39;s still a problem and there&amp;#39;s another problem because the family at the end of Genesis because of famine is actually on its way out of the promised land and it&amp;#39;s on its way to Egypt so we know the family we know the promise we know where it&amp;#39;s supposed to happen but we also know that by the end of the book they&amp;#39;re not going to be there and so while Genesis ends with a bit of a cliffhanger it does enough to tell us how this solution is going to unfold but it also tells us it&amp;#39;s such a way to keep us read and to keep us going so Genesis really sets us up it gives us the cosmic problem it talks about the the fundamental problem with our existence and what needs to be rectified and it tells us about the solution it tells the four general Avenue it tells us the general idea about the solution but it only gives us so much it gives us enough to keep us going lets us continue on and to move into the rest of the story and folks this is going to set us up ultimately for Jesus because that solution will not be ultimately fulfilled in a nation it will not ultimately be fulfilled in King David or as in King David or a Judean monarch on the throne in Jerusalem but rather all of these promises all of these covenants are setting us up because they&amp;#39;re aligning us with the ultimate solution and it&amp;#39;s going to be and it&amp;#39;s with that historical reality that the full awareness of what that solution is and what it what it entails and what it&amp;#39;s going to look like is going to be brought into focus and it&amp;#39;s not until Jesus comes into play do we get the full focus and this sharp focus of what it&amp;#39;s going to be so in sum Abraham&amp;#39;s calling and promise produces the solution to the cosmic problem the solution to the problem is not without its obstacles we have domestic obstacles obstacles anthropological cultural biological host of obstacles that seek to undermine the promise in the solution but regardless of this to come the plan continues to move forward that ball keeps rolling and it testifies ultimately to the complicated interaction of human freedom and divine humanity makes choices and with each choice that we make there are consequences and yet somehow someway God ordains it and works through it and uses our ability to make choices to get us where we need to be together Square his plan and his solution demands so above all I hope that you got a lot to think about but again this this is very important for us to understand that this this book lays out the problem for us and it also begins to lay out the solution and it lays out the solution in such a way paint for us a trajectory and that victory will ultimately lead us Jesus

Transcript for:Exploring Genesis: Themes and Theological Insights

Transcript for:
Exploring Genesis: Themes and Theological Insights