Preacher: Michael Foster,
Text: Genesis 1:1
East River Church (Batavia, OH)
The Beginning
Good morning. Good morning. My name is Michael Foster. I'm glad to have you with us. I love the new door. It doesn't feel like we're in an airplane hanger anymore, does it? Thank you. All the men that put all that hard work into making this place look a little more beautiful every week. Well, today we begin our first half of the study of the book of Genesis for the next several months. We'll work our way through chapters one through eleven. Then we'll take a break for a short series in a New Testament book, probably First Thessalonians, before returning to finish Genesis chapters 12 through 50. That'll probably be almost all of next year. It's going to be a fun, long journey starting with a single verse. So please turn to the very first verse of the Bible, Genesis chapter one, verse one. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. This is the word of the Lord. Let's pray. Let's pray. Father, we ask you that you would bless us with humility and faith as we study your word. In your Psalms, you say, if the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do? So Lord, we ask that the foundation of our faith, the promise of the true and better second Adam, our Lord and Savior Jesus, would be laid thick as we go through this book. God, build us up to your glory and to the good of others. We ask this in His name. Amen. Amen. Where we come from, why we are the way we are, and why we do the things we do matter deeply to everyone. I've observed that everyone from a small child to an old man is interested and invested in the stories of their ancestors. My maternal grandfather died when my mother was 11, so I never met him. And when I was six, my maternal grandmother drove me to Cleveland, Ohio to meet my great uncle Dale, so he's my grandfather's brother. That side of the family is Irish Native American, and I got my fact straight, Pawnee Indian. My great uncle Dale had been a wrestler called Rolling Thunder in the 60s. He was kind of like the predecessor to WWE, so there's this funny picture of him as the first Native American wrestler. But I'm pretty sure he's more Irish than Native American, but who wants to see an Irish wrestler? Really come on. Anyhow, he had really embraced that side of his family ancestry. And while I was out there, I was probably six. He took me to Indian powwow and told me all sorts of stories about that side of the family that I knew nothing about up to that point. It was captivating, and I can still hear the boom of his base voice as he told me those stories. I can just hear the stories in my head. My grandmother was a German immigrant. She would tell me stories of the old country, and on occasion, usually a few beers deep, about during her life, during the Second World War. And though I was a foster, I always identified more with the Patrick side of my family. And I think that's because of all these stories. They shaped how I thought about myself and my place in the world. My dad and mom would tell me stories with my grandparents and great uncles and all those guys. They told me stories that went way back. It gave me a sense of roots. And then last summer, I was surprised to see my sons out in the back porch listening to my younger brother, who we see like every five or six years, listening to him, quietly listening to him, tell stories of our childhood, all of which were most certainly lies. But by the way, parents, if you don't have it in you to read a book, like at nine, like a clock and I waited too long to put my kids to bed and they want me to read 70 pages of Dr. Seuss. It's not happening. I'm just not going to do it. But I recommend that you tell them a story from your childhood, or about how you and your wife met, or you and your husband met, or about your grandparents and their aunts and their uncles. They'll listen, they'll even start to ask you to tell them more. And that's because family histories aren't just any old story. They explained where you came from. They explained why you grew up poor. They explained how you came to live where you live. They explained your language and your traditions. I was still trying to figure out why in the world we have the, what's it, the Christmas pickle that I was like, and where did you pick up this tradition of a Christmas pickle where you put a pickle on a tree and to make the kids suffer even more, someone has to find the pickle to open the first gift. And I was like, was this handed down? Is this a German thing? And we don't know. So they explain your language or tradition. They explain why your uncle was left out of the will. They explain why grandpa drank so much. They explain why we are enemies of that family and friends with this family. They explain everything around you. They make sense of your world. The word Genesis is the Latin version of the Greek word, meaning origin or source or birth. It's where we get the word generate generations. This book is the beginning of all things. Besides a brief prologue, it's told through a series of family histories spanning generations. When you come to understand your connection to these family histories, you will not only understand the reality of the world, but also your greatest needs and purposes. This is the story beneath all stories. It not only explains your family, but every family that ever was and ever will be. It's foundational to all of life. Genesis reveals the origin of almost everything except God who has no beginning. It covers the beginning of the cosmos, life, mankind, the seven day, week, marriage, parenthood, sin, sacrifice, redemption, death, nations, government cities, music, literature, art, agriculture, languages and all culture. It all starts here. A commentator named Sidlo Baxter, which is unfortunate, wrote, besides being introductory, Genesis is explanatory. The roots of all subsequent revelation are planted deep in Genesis, and whoever would truly comprehend that revelation must begin here. That's why Genesis is always under attack and why it deserves careful study. So let's begin. When studying a book, especially an old one, you want to do your best to identify its genre, author, original audience and particular occasion. They serve as helpful interpretive grids. And in some books, they matter more than others. In Genesis, it matters a lot. Most of the weird takes on Genesis, which we'll get to result from not understanding his overall context. Genesis is the first of five books that make up the Torah or Pentateuch, meaning five books or five scrolls. The Pentateuch includes Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. These five books are often referred to elsewhere in Scripture as the law of Moses. Torah roughly translates to law, but not all five books are legal documents, like say Deuteronomy almost exclusively is. So what's that all about? Well, Gordon Wynnum, which is a pretty solid commentator, he explains law is too narrow of a conception of what the Torah is. Rather, Torah is a unique combination of story and commandment that makes a fundamental statement about what God expects by saying as forcefully as possible what the people of God is. The narratives in Genesis teach ethics and theology just as much does the laws and the theological sermons found elsewhere in the Pentateuch. And for this reason, they belong to the Torah. So in a sense, Torah is almost its own genre, using and blending several genres of literature to make its point. As a side note, this is why Genesis 1 can be true history and also utilize poetic language. Some people see Genesis 1 through 2, 3 as a poem. I don't think it's a poem. I don't think you can justify that by looking at the original language, but it certainly has elevated prose, so it's poetic speech at some level. And that's not at odds with the more straightforward historical narratives that follow from chapter 2 onwards. So it's Torah. It's a mix of stuff on purpose. The gospels are kind of like that too. The gospels are their own genre of literature. Now, as I said, these five books are referred to throughout Scripture as the law of Moses. However, we only find one of these books directly attributed to Moses about five or six times in Scripture. And that's Deuteronomy. So in 1 Corinthians 9, 9, you read, "For it's written in the law of Moses, you shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain." That being said, among Bible-believing scholars, there's little question that Moses wrote the Pentateuch. And we know for sure that it recorded some of the history of the Israelites. Listen to Numbers 33, verse 1 and 2. These are the stages of the people of Israel when they went out of the land of Egypt by their companies under the leadership of Moses and Aaron. Moses wrote down their starting places, stage by stage, by command of the Lord. And these are their stages according to their starting places. So he wrote down some of it. We know he recorded that there. And then it's also telling that Stephen in his speech before the Sanhedrin Council in Acts 7 said this regarding Moses. At this time, Moses was born and he was beautiful in God's sight. And he was brought up for three months in his father's house. And when he was exposed, Pharaoh's daughter adopted him and brought him up as her own son. And Moses was instructed in all the wisdoms of the Egyptians, and he was mighty in his words and deeds. So Moses was a highly educated man, mighty in his words. It kind of gives you some color to Moses saying, "Hey, I'm not good at talking. Don't send me." And God getting frustrated with them and saying, "Alright, we'll have Aaron go speak for you." And it's Aaron speaking for Moses that gets him in more trouble than just about anything. Nonetheless, he possessed the skills that are on display in the beauty and complexity of the written composition of the Pentateuch. When you get into that, I don't usually like to go too deep into the sort of literature side of the Bible because people can get lost in it. But man, when you're going through the Pentateuch in Genesis, it reveals the beauty of God's Word. One way we know God's Word is true is because of its majesty, something that says in some of the confessions. And when you study Genesis, it's not like anything else out there. Even the way, I don't know if we'll do this too much, but everything that happens in chapter one is divisible by sevens, the way that repeats the words. It's like this crazy order throughout. It would take someone with incredible skills to do that, and Moses had those skills. We also know that Moses often spoke with God. So in Exodus 33, 7-11, it describes Moses' relationship with God like so. Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, far off from the camp, and he called it the tent of meeting, and everyone who sought the Lord would go out to the tent, a meeting which was outside the camp. Whenever Moses went out to the tent, all the people would rise up, and each would stand at his tent door and watch Moses until he had gone into the tent. When Moses entered the tent, the pillar of cloud would descend and stand at the entrance of the tent, and the Lord would speak with Moses. When all the people saw the pillar of cloud standing at the entrance of the tent, all the people would rise up in worship, each at his tent door, thus the Lord used to speak to Moses face to face as a man speaks to his friend. So Moses had the skills to write the Pentateuch, and for sure wrote portions of that's undeniable, and because he spoke often with God, he had access to the knowledge of how things began at the very beginning. So some of the stuff in Genesis, God just told Moses, some theorize that there were family histories kept written down that have been lost to the ages, that's possible. But we know that Moses talked to God a lot, and we know that Deuteronomy flows right out of the rest of the Pentateuch, and there's no reason to think Genesis isn't written by Moses, it's pretty clearly written by Moses. He's the author, and now since he is the author of Genesis, it's easy to determine the original audience, the Israelites, during the Exodus, that's who this was written for. Now how does Genesis end? Here are the last four verses in chapter 50. So Joseph remained in Egypt, he and his father's house, Joseph lived 110 years, and Joseph saw Ephraim's children of the third generation, children also of the son of Manasseh, were counted as Joseph's own, and Joseph said to his brothers, "I'm about to die, but God will visit you and bring you up out of this land to the land that he swore to Abraham to Isaac and to Jacob." Then Joseph made the sons of Israel swear, saying, "God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here." So Joseph died, being 110 years old. Then they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt. So Genesis ends explaining how the Israelites ended up in Egypt as slaves. It also ends with a reminder of all the promises God made to the patriarchs, promises that Joseph told them God would keep. It particularly caused the remembrance the promises made to Abraham. So Genesis is Moses laying the foundational history behind the Israelites' slavery, God's promise of redemption, and their special purpose among the nations. It's a family history with a prophetic component. You find God's promise to Abraham with this prophetic component in Genesis 12. There God says, "Go from your country, and from your kin red, and your father's house to a land that I will show you, and I'll make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and I'll make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you, I will curse, and you, all the families of the earth, shall be blessed." So this is the dividing point of Genesis. There's a reason we're doing chapters 1 through 11, and then chapters 12 through 50. Let me explain. The message of Genesis is ultimately a message of redemption. And we'll touch on all of that, but that's not the main purpose of Genesis, Genesis speaks to that, undermines that, and we'll deal with that. But a lot of times we miss the main message, the message that God was trying to get across to the Israelites, which wasn't the stupidity that is evolution, it was something else. Genesis 1 through 11 describes mankind's descent from his Kingly fellowship with God and Eden into a state of misery and death. Mankind was made to rule over the earth, right? God makes the whole world, and he stresses day three and day six, because on day three he makes the land, and on day six he puts man on the land where man lives. Man is the height of creation because man is God's vice-region, he's God's image, he's God's representation to the world. He will bring God's image to the world as he has dominion and rules over the world. He's to dwell in the presence of God, God puts him in a garden in the district of Eden, and there he's with God in the cool of the day or the wind of the day dwelling with God. And then the command given to Adam and Eve was to fill the world, and in filling the world and having lots of children, what were they going to do? Well, they would duplicate the image of God, they'll spread the image of God and bring true worship across the entire planet. That's what we do when we have children and raise them up in the Lord. In a sense that mandate that we'll get to in a couple weeks is the great commission before sin came into the world. They had the same purpose, which is that all the nations would worship God as their king. Now instead of doing all that, mankind rebelled, and they were driven from the presence of God. The presence of God is one of the key themes throughout Scripture, and we'll get to it repeatedly as we study Genesis. The first man ever born, instead of being a worshiper of God, what was he? He was a murderer. Not only was he a murderer, he was a murderer that refused to worship God on God's terms. When we get to Hebrews someday, some years, many years from now, when we get to Hebrews, we'll see that Abel understood worship right. He came to God, entrusted God, and offered his worship in faith. His sacrifice in faith came was not willing to do that. He was proud. So instead of the image of God being magnified in the world, there's the image of fallen man, the marred image of God. And it doesn't take long for the world to be filled with violent apostates like Cain. Before you know it, the whole world's corrupt. No one is following God's way. In the world, it's so corrupt that God cleanses it with the flood of judgment only Noah and his family are saved. Once again, instead of magnifying God's name to true worship, all the people of the earth, they gather together and build a tower that they wanted to reach into the heavens to make their name great. So in a sense, they're trying to re- ascend to the heavens to be in God's presence, but without God's blessing. And without God's blessing, no one can dwell in God's presence. So God scatters the nation. So in Genesis 1 through 11, you have four major events. You have creation, you have fall, you have flood, you have Babel. So that's what you have in 1 through 11. When we get to 12 through 50, you have four major patriarchs that you'll track through there. Now, these first chapters are mankind getting progressively farther and farther from the presence of God until, as nations, they're completely scattered. And it happens in stages, and it really sticks out as you go through Genesis. In Genesis 3 verse 24, God drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden, he placed a cheer of him in a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. So God is pushing them down, and then at the gate to Eden, the way to get in, he puts an angel, so they're being pushed down. And then we get Genesis 4, 16, after Cain rebels against God, then Cain went away from the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden. So they go down, and now they're going further out. Then when you get to Genesis 11, 8, so the Lord dispersed them, they're over the face of all the earth, and they left off the building of the city. So that's right after the Tower of Babel. So it's interesting what you have in them going further and further away from the presence of God. And then you have this last effort, all mankind and all their power come together to build this tower to get back to God and their best efforts. And God says, "No, no one can come to me without my blessing. I will frustrate them, and I'll scatter them to the old earth." So instead of being united together in one in the presence of God, based on the blessing of God, they are scattered to the earth in the need of God's redemption. That's the story of Genesis 1 through 11. It's descent away from God. It's interesting that in Genesis, you go down to Egypt, like descending into darkness. Think about Joseph. He goes down into the pit, and then he goes down into the jail. He gets his coat of many colors taken from him, thrown into a pit, and then the jailer's wife grabs his tunic, and he's thrown into the jail. When he's raised up, he's clothed, again, getting his majesty giving to him. But then how does it end in Genesis? It ends with him in a coffin down in Egypt, right? In death buried. So that's why Genesis 12 through 50, and that is the focus of Genesis, right? So 1 through 11 is going to be fun in this study, but it's just setting the context, right? 12 through 50 deals with God's promises to the patrons. That's the focus. These are the men who are going to save the world. Through them, somehow the world's going to be saved. And in Genesis 3, we are promised that from Eve would come a seed, a child who would destroy the serpent's work, and his seed, and redeem man. And then in Genesis 9, we promise that God will never judge the world by flood again. Yet, in Genesis 11, the world's full of idolaters. The nations are in disarray, and there's no redeemer on the scene. It's very much like the situation before God called Noah to himself, the world's full of corruption, full of idolaters, and just as God called Noah to himself by grace, then he does what? He calls Abram to himself. That's the context for Abram's call. Out of Abram will come a special people of God who will dwell in God's presence again. Abram's name will be great, not because of his efforts, but because of God's blessing. And through Abram, a man good as dead, that God will fill the world with worshipers. Matter of fact, it's through Abraham that all the families of the earth shall be blessed. And that promise is handed down from Abraham to Isaac to Jacob, who is called Israel. So in Romans, these promises are called the promises to the patriarchs. By the way, as a side note, as someone who did write a book on patriarchy, I do have just a slightly point out that if you have a problem with patriarchy, you have a problem with the Old Testament. There's good patriarchs, there's bad patriarchs. We'll get to that at the end of the sermon. In Exodus 29, Moses states, "I will dwell among the people of Israel, this is God, and I will be their God, and they shall know that I am the Lord their God, who brought them out of the land of Egypt, that I might dwell among them. I am the Lord their God." In Exodus 33, 1 it reads, "The Lord said to Moses, the part, go up from here, you and the people who you have brought up out of the land of Egypt, to the land I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob saying, "To your offspring I will give it." So just as you go down into Egypt, you go up to Jerusalem. Jerusalem is always pictured as like going to a mountain. So Egypt is the descent away from God. Jerusalem is the ascent to God. And that's because that's eventually where that temple will stand, the very temple that's ripped and represents God's presence, being with all of us through the gift of the Holy Spirit. We have this promise of offspring here. So Genesis explains how mankind got driven from the presence of God, and why his return into the presence of God is on the basis of a gracious promise, and that's it. When him again, he says it well, if the message of Genesis is essentially one of redemption, Genesis 3 through 11 explains why man needs salvation, and why he needs to be saved, or what he needs to be saved from. Genesis 1 through 2, in describing the original state of the world, also describes the goal of redemption, to which ultimately the world and humanity will return when the patriarchal promises are completely fulfilled. So we'll come back to that in a moment. Now Genesis has a clear framing device that is structured around, and it's the Hebrew word, Tolodot, or Tolodot, excuse me, in the English, it translates as these are the generations of it'll stick out as you go through Genesis. This is sometimes referred to as the Tolodot formula, because it repeats over and over again. There's 10 of them. So, in chapter 2, 4, all the way through 4, 26, that's the generations of heaven and earth, then it's the generations of Adam, 5, 1 through 6, 8, then the generations of Noah through 6, 9 through 9, 29. And then it's the generations of sham, ham, and j 5th in chapter 10, 1 through 11, 9, then it's just this little side sort of generations of sham in 11, 10 through 26, then the generations of Tara, 11, 27, and that really goes all the way through chapter 25. Then you have the generations of Ishmael, 25, 12 through 18, generations of Isaac, 25 through 35, generations of Esau, just in chapter 36 to 37, and lastly the generations of Jacob, 37 through 50. Genesis traces the promise of God through consecutive family histories. Those are these Tolodotes, right? From a literary standpoint, Moses uses these as a way to introduce what is about to happen in the narrative. And that's why you find the table of nations in chapter 10 with all the various languages before you find the nations in languages divided at the Tower of Babel in chapter 11. It also kind of answers like, why do we have the generations of Tara? What does Tara matter? Well, it's because the generations, another way to read these is to read them as this is what came out of, or what was generated from. For example, the first generation is the generations of the heavens, or heaven and earth. Now what came from the earth? What was generated out of the earth? Well, by God's power, Adam, and subsequently from Adam, Adam was generated from that. They came out of it. Now, the reason this, and that's why Tara matters, not because Tara plays that big of a role, but his son Abraham came from Tara. So these genealogies in Genesis are always referring to what's about to follow. It's not a summary of what's happened, and that becomes a big deal, especially in Genesis 6 when Scully and motor, you know, arrive on the scene and all the weird ex-files Christianity stuff. That'll make sense in a couple of weeks if it doesn't yet, just bear with me. But now here's why it matters even more, these generations is because we know that a redeemer will come from or out of Adam and Eve. In Genesis 3.15, we read, "I will put empathy between you and the woman in between your offspring and her offspring. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel." So these toll-dotes are tracing the messianic line through history. Along the way, you get these little side stories that tell you about the discarded line. So that's why you'll have these little anti genealogies of Cain or Ishmael or Esau. They're spiritually speaking the offspring of the devil, not because they literally come from angels or the devil. That's not how that language is used in Scripture. It's because they're like them. They're rebels against God. These family histories with all their promises, they ultimately find their culmination in the gospels. I remember when I first became a Christian reading Matthew thinking, "This is not a good way to start a book." It's really hard to get through your first chapter should always grab people and get like, "This is awesome." And they should get excited. That's because I didn't understand. If you understand what's happening in Matthew and Luke's genealogy, they're saying everything we've been talking about for all of history, everything that's been foreshadowed, this is about that. All the generations leading up to this very moment, this moment in history through the thousands and thousands of years. That's who this guy is. That's who this Jesus is. I love how Luke does it. In Luke 3, there is a genealogy, a series of generations that works its way backwards from Jesus through the patriarchs all the way to Adam the Son of God. So it creates an immediate contrast between Adam the Son of God and Jesus the Son of God, and that picks up all the more in Romans 5 where we have the second Adam. Jesus is this true and better Adam that does everything that Adam himself couldn't do, where Adam wouldn't keep God's law in a perfect domain with everything he wanted, Jesus did in a desert. Right? Where Adam couldn't overcome the serpent, Jesus did. Luke 3, 23 says, "When he began his ministry, Jesus himself was about 30 years of age, being as was supposed the Son of Joseph, the Son, the Son, the Son." That's how it opens there. The purpose here is to stress that Jesus' ministry is the ministry of the seat of Eve. He is the promised blessing from Abraham. He is the prophet that would be like Moses. He's the heir to King David's everlasting throne. That's what it's saying. All these stories, all these family histories, they all fit into a bigger picture. What's that bigger picture? Jesus Christ. The King of Kings. The branch of Jesse. Right? The stone from which the water came from. The angel of the Lord. All of history culminates with Jesus. Every promise, every single thing. Jesus will not let people misunderstand that. So Luke's gospel closes with these verses. Now, Jesus said to him, "These are my words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled." Then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. So part of understanding the Old Testament, part of understanding the Scriptures is understanding that all these things were written about Jesus. I've told this story before, but this girl I met once when I was out preaching the gospel. She'd come out to preach the gospel to another group. And she said, "I belong to the Apostolic New Testament Church. I said, 'You're not going to believe this. I belong to the Apostolic Old Testament Church. I sit together with the whole Bible.'" And she said, "No, you don't." I was like, "No, I don't. No, I don't." They're not just New Testament believers. There's Bible believers. It's the old and new together. It's the whole revelation of God for you to understand your place in this world continuing at the end of Luke's gospel. He said to them, "Thus it was written that the Christ would suffer and rise again from the dead the third day." That was first talked about in Genesis 3, that His heel would be injured. And that repentance for forgiveness of sins would be proclaimed in His name to all the nations beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things, and behold, I am standing forth the promise of my Father upon you, but you are to stay in the city until you're clothed with power from on high. So the whole world is scattered. And then the people of God are gathered in Jerusalem where the Messiah, the Promised One, comes right on the mountain in the temple. The temple's opened up through the work of Jesus, and now Jesus God dwells with us. And what are we to do? We are to take it out to the nations. That is what's being communicated in Genesis 1-11. The nations need the light. And Israel, you are to be a light to the nations to prepare the way of the Lord, to preach this good news so they can be reconciled to God. But that finds us fulfillment in Jesus. Jesus fulfills the law of Moses. There's all five books. He's a true and better Moses. He leads us out of the darkness of slavery of sin back in the presence of God. Through forgiveness, we are made sons of God. That's our family now. We belong to God forever. And like Adam, in the beginning, Adam is in the garden, ruling over the world, but also serving before God. He's like a king priest or a priest's king. And that makes so much sense when you read 1 Peter 2 verses 9-10. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Now we are a royal priesthood. Now we are a nation. Now we are a people that God possess. And what is the promise that Jesus is talking about at the end of the promise of the Father? Well, that's that the Holy Spirit would be in us and dwell with us and be with us through this whole life. God, not only do we dwell in God's presence, through some amazing thing God dwells in us. Genesis is a great origin story. It teaches us our family history. I have more time than I thought I'd have. So I was going to kick my Minotaur story out the next week, but I'll give it to you right now without my notes in here. So a lot of scholars, when they look at the first chapter of Genesis, what they say, this is faded myth, right? Because it's not quite mythic, but it is almost mythic. So it's like basically Moses or whoever took some stories like Gilgamesh or whatever and reworked it and it's faded myth. But that's the exact opposite of what it is. It's not faded myth. It's faded history. And so when people look at Genesis and say, Hey, all these other ancient Near East cultures have a story like this, of course they do. They're remembering what actually happened. So the story of the Minotaur is basically a bunch of Greek gods give mad at people in King Minos, his wife, through a story which is not Sunday, Sunday material, gives birth to the Minotaur, right? He's this half beast sort of thing that is down kept in this labyrinth below in the city there, and they would basically sacrifice to it, 14 versions or whatever they'd have sent as tributes from all these other islands in the area. And that's the story, right? Some of them escape when a guy like gives himself over, I forget, it's a long time since I paid attention to this stuff, but he kills him and all this. What's really fascinating is that when they were doing some excavations on that island, they discovered this fresca. And on this fresca, which is like a painting, there's this gigantic bull and a bunch of people looking at it. And these young people, like in white gowns, tossing themselves over the bull, right? The other thing they found, two things that were interesting is that there was a crazy place where they kept all their wine below that kind of looked like a labyrinth. What was also interesting is that temple or that palace/temple had walls that they designed that could be moved, that way they could make a room bigger or whatever, kind of like having dividing walls. And so it was always changing. So what do you have there? You got a bull that people are throwing themselves over, and you have something that's like a labyrinth. Through telephone, you can see how that became mythical, right? One of my favorite 30/30s was about Bo Jackson. There's all these crazy mythological stories about Bo Jackson, the baseball football player. And one story was that he ran and jumped over a car once. It turned out it wasn't a myth. It was true. But you can see how like we tell, like, yeah, man, he fought 10 guys, right? But it actually like fought one guy. And just as you told the stories throughout the years, it grew and it turned into this sort of mythology. What Moses is doing in Genesis is that he's clawing away, pulling away all the false history, all the false myth. And showing the true story. When you start to understand, when you get older, this happens, young people, you start to understand why your parents were the way they were, and it makes a lot of sense of life. Like, I didn't know that mom just wasn't the same after this child died or this thing happened or whatever, but as you look back on it, it starts to make sense. What Moses is doing here is helping them understand like the whole story of God and their place in it. And he's doing the same thing for us. It teaches us family histories, two family histories. And that's the question you needed to ask. Will you walk in the way of Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, and Joseph? Are those your people? Do you belong to their family line? If you do, it means you have faith and you trust that your access to God is based on promise and blessing alone. Or you walk like Cain, Ham, Nimrod, and Esau. Even like Pharaoh, it is interesting that all the people that reject God in the Pentateuch early on are city builders, and they love to build monuments to themselves and build ziggurats and pyramids and towers that make their name great. And they'll call themselves gods, and they're all dead. And the pyramids I heard, I don't know if this is true or not, but I read somewhere that they used to be white, and they look pretty awesome from far away. But close up, close up, they're pretty dingy, right? They fall on the pieces. These guys build their monuments, and they fall to the ground. Is that your family line? Nations that pass away? Or do you belong to the family of God? Will you try to ascend to God through your own efforts? Or will you depend on his blessings and promises as fulfilled in Jesus Christ? That is ultimately the message of Genesis, and I'm looking forward to us digging into it the next several months. Let's pray. Father, we thank you so much for your word. We thank you that we have a new beginning in Christ. We have a new creation in Christ, that through his perfect life that fulfills everything, every promise, everything foreshadowed, he is the substance. We thank you by him, we've been cleansed by the blood, and we have been brought into your presence, and someday we'll be in your full presence forever. Someday we won't have to ascend to heaven, but the new Jerusalem will come down to earth, and we'll dwell with you forever and ever. We thank you for that. God, I pray for those that don't know you. I pray that they would repent of being like Cain, being proud, worshiping you, trying to worship you, or live life on their own terms. I pray, Lord, that they would kneel before you, just as the patriarch Jacob was humbled and trusted you, God. Give them that faith, too. In the name of your Son, we ask. Amen. Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]