Yesterday, I preached a sermon called The Faith of our Fathers on Genesis 49:28–50:26. You can listen here if you want to. I really enjoyed both the time in the study and the actual preaching of the message, but it had a particular difficulty.
Genesis is a huge book. It’s complex and it’s controversial, particularly in the age of AI, secular humanism, and transhumanism. We took nearly 3 years to work through the whole thing, including breaks for other sermon series. There is much that could have been said over the course of our time in the book, but there is only so much time each Lord’s Day.
And so here, briefly, are a few thoughts that I have as I reflect on the book as a whole.
God is truly, irrevocably intent on working through humans.
This may seem like an obvious statement in regard to Genesis. God created us last, after all. Not only that, in Christ, God because a human and Jesus is the one who brings about the restoration of all things. I don’t think this is controversial on the surface.
But it is controversial when you consider that, as Ronnie Martin said in an episode of The Imperfect Pastor podcast, our attempt to put ourselves in God’s place brought about the death of the universe. The scandal isn’t so much that God intended to work through humans at first but that he continued to do so.
We have got so used to living on this side of the fall that we assume it is eternal.
A regular objection to the existence of God or his goodness is that there is so much pain and suffering in this world. The presence of the kind of anguish we see depicted on the news each day makes this a significant question. It is one which we ought not downplay.
Christians are not immune to doubts about this. It is very easy to believe that things are supposed to be better for us. We fall into the trap of believing a sort of prosperity gospel and are then left disappointed when the “seeds of faith” that were sown don’t seem to grow anything but smaller bank accounts.
Right after the fall, we are told exactly what the world is going to be like until Jesus returns. The reason we long for life to look and feel better is because we were made for a world where there are no tears.
Each of the Patriarchs experienced a famine that tested their trust in God. And they all failed in various, relatable ways. While we live in a post-resurrection reality, we do not yet live in a post-return reality.
It is the story of the journey from a created cosmos to a corpse in a coffin and of humanity repeatedly failing to recognise God as God.
Genesis begins with so much potential, so much life. There are nearly infinite resources, a garden to grow and expand, and the overlap of heaven and earth where God walked with his creation. And it ends with Joseph, dead and embalmed, waiting to be carried home to the Land of Promise.
The fall depicts our first parents believing the lie that they were less than what God had made them. The great tragedy of their being deceived is the simple fact that they were already like God. They bore his image.
In the end, with Joseph foreshadowing the Philippians 2 mindset of Jesus, we finally see someone refuse to put themselves in God’s place. Though Joseph had been given riches and power, he knew that he wasn’t God.
Approaching the primordial account with a hermeneutic of mechanical certainty will shape the way you read the rest of the book and indeed the whole of Scripture.
This is the most controversial point, but possibly the most important because of the impact it has down the road. I struggle to know how Psalm 19 can be true if I am supposed to read the first nine chapters of Genesis as taking place only 10,000 years ago. Adhering to a literal, six-day creation ignores the structure of the whole book. It renders poetry as prescription. It ignores the fact that Moses wrote Genesis with a particular audience in mind and it ignores the cosmology of the ancient Near East.
Genesis is a beautiful book.
It is disturbing, offensive, convicting, and it is glorious. On its pages we see the mystery of a sovereign God and a responsible humanity. We see the first hints at God’s plan to save through his Chosen Servant. We see the first of the prophets. We see unmerited favour given to a seemingly random moon worshipper whose family would ultimately bless all of the nations in Christ.