Doug Mc Masters: Thank you for us continuing our Thanksgiving on Tuesday.
Doug Mc Masters: Well, welcome to Route 66,.
Doug Mc Masters: And we're not in Chicago, yeah, and we're not in LA either.
Doug Mc Masters: Well, we're in the book of Genesis and beginning tonight and going through all the Sunday evenings that we have we don't meet during holiday weekends on Sunday night and other things come up, you know, like VBS preparation and things like that.
Doug Mc Masters: So 66 weeks of studies, of course, are going to stretch out to probably a year and a half, but we're right at the launching point in the book of Genesis.
Doug Mc Masters: The most basic question in life may well be why is there something rather than nothing?
Doug Mc Masters: Why is there anything at all?
Doug Mc Masters: Well, you could ask people that question and you would talk to people who are naturalists and they would sort of laugh at you for thinking that kind of question was a relevant question, because they might say something like well, everything that existed always has, and so they would just sidestep the question.
Doug Mc Masters: They wouldn't even consider the question why is there something rather than nothing?
Doug Mc Masters: Well, something's always been.
Doug Mc Masters: The difficulty is is, as astronomers are studying the universe, they're realizing that it's expanding, and ever expanding, from what was once a compact coil and that, if they think about it, brings them back to the very same question why is there that something rather than nothing?
Doug Mc Masters: And of course they have their own theories as to why that might be.
Doug Mc Masters: But can there be something from nothing?
Doug Mc Masters: Some people say no.
Doug Mc Masters: Maria von Trapp in the movie Sound of Music was in the gazebo with the captain singing and she says nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever can.
Doug Mc Masters: But Christian theism believes that there is a God who is personal and transcendent.
Doug Mc Masters: He's the creator of the universe and he's the creator of us.
Doug Mc Masters: And it answers the question why is there something rather than nothing?
Doug Mc Masters: In fact, the Bible's opening sentence answers that very question.
Doug Mc Masters: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.
Doug Mc Masters: But that question is not the only question humans ask, that we ask what about the beginning of us, the human race?
Doug Mc Masters: Who are we?
Doug Mc Masters: Were we made for a purpose?
Doug Mc Masters: Does our existence have any meaning outside the short limits of our birth and our death?
Doug Mc Masters: Some of those questions really get into our hearts and minds.
Doug Mc Masters: But there are other questions.
Doug Mc Masters: What is our relationship to creation?
Doug Mc Masters: Is it here for our use?
Doug Mc Masters: Are we simply one of everything else?
Doug Mc Masters: Equally, none of us more privileged than the other.
Doug Mc Masters: Was the world created for us?
Doug Mc Masters: Are we just an accident of chemical and biological processes.
Doug Mc Masters: Even more questions Is there something beyond the physical?
Doug Mc Masters: Is what we see all there is, or is there something else beyond our senses?
Doug Mc Masters: What about God?
Doug Mc Masters: Is there one?
Doug Mc Masters: If he is, what is he like?
Doug Mc Masters: How do we relate to him?
Doug Mc Masters: Like?
Doug Mc Masters: How do we relate to him?
Doug Mc Masters: These are questions that people ask and the book of Genesis, not addressing every one of those questions, fully answers every one of those questions directly, because the Bible is the word of God.
Doug Mc Masters: Genesis is the foundation of that book.
Doug Mc Masters: In Genesis we learn of God's creation, we learn of human rebellion, we learn of God's pursuit to redeem us.
Doug Mc Masters: We run into people who are familiar to us now Adam and Eve, noah, abraham, joseph and so many other people.
Doug Mc Masters: Genesis begins with creation and it ends with Israel and his sons and their wives and children in Egypt.
Doug Mc Masters: Tonight I want to introduce you to the book of Genesis.
Doug Mc Masters: Some of this you will know, some of it you may not know, but in any case we'll all come to a realization of its significance within the context and the corpus of the Bible and where it means to bring us.
Doug Mc Masters: So I'm going to answer some basic questions who, when, what, where, why, how, those kind of questions.
Doug Mc Masters: I'm going to buzz through most of them very, very quickly in order to sort of land on some that I think we'll slow down for a minute and really find out what the significance of Genesis is.
Doug Mc Masters: First of all, who?
Doug Mc Masters: Genesis is the first book of the Bible.
Doug Mc Masters: It's the first volume in a five-volume work called the Pentateuch.
Doug Mc Masters: It provides an introduction to us by way mostly of a life of Moses.
Doug Mc Masters: Exodus, chapter 2, he's born, at the end of Deuteronomy, he dies, and so four of those five books really are wrapped around the life of Moses himself.
Doug Mc Masters: Moses is regarded by the biblical record as the author of Exodus, numbers, leviticus, numbers and Deuteronomy and, by implication, also Genesis.
Doug Mc Masters: Where did he write it?
Doug Mc Masters: Also Genesis, where did he write it?
Doug Mc Masters: Well, he must have written it somewhere between Mount Sinai and the banks of the Jordan River, where he died before the people crossed over into the promised land.
Doug Mc Masters: So all that he wrote in the book of Genesis would have been from the perspective of that journey from one point to the other.
Doug Mc Masters: When did he write it?
Doug Mc Masters: Well, obviously he must have had some sources, but he compiled those sources and wrote while the people were in the wilderness, wandering somewhere around the time of 1446 to 1406 BC, the 15th century BC.
Doug Mc Masters: Why did he write the book of Genesis to the people in their wanderings?
Doug Mc Masters: What he was doing was bringing the cosmic and universal implications of this exodus that the people were on and showed how what was happening to them is rooted in human history not just a deliverance of one man, moses, from one evil man, pharaoh and helping them realize that God had a purpose plan for them by pulling them out of Egypt and shows them that God's global purposes of redemption were to be, they were a part of and they were discovering and seeing for themselves.
Doug Mc Masters: That kind of moves into the why of Genesis a little bit, but we'll get more deeply into that in just a moment.
Doug Mc Masters: As we get into the why, we understand that the book of Genesis comes from the Hebrew.
Doug Mc Masters: The Hebrew book we call Genesis is called In the Beginning and it takes those very first words from Genesis Bereshit.
Doug Mc Masters: In the Beginning.
Doug Mc Masters: The English title, genesis, comes from a Greek word which means origins, which means origins, and we'll talk about exactly where that comes from in just a moment.
Doug Mc Masters: And so we recognize that this book, Genesis, provides for us an understanding of origins the origin of the universe, the origin of the earth, the origin of animate life in general, the origin of humanity, the origin of history, the origin of the fall, the origin of promises of redemption a lot of beginnings in the book of Genesis.
Doug Mc Masters: It's a very foundational book, foundational to the Torah, foundational to the Old Testament, foundational to all of the Scripture.
Doug Mc Masters: It serves as an introduction to us and is indispensable in our understanding to know what the rest of the Bible is about.
Doug Mc Masters: The book narrates the origins of the people of Israel, the people through whom God was going to bless the world and focusing on his promises through them to restore his creation back to the way it was at the beginning.
Doug Mc Masters: And so we learn more in the book of Genesis, not just about Adam, but moving very quickly to Abraham and slowing down dramatically to learn about his children, his grandchildren and their children.
Doug Mc Masters: How is this book structured?
Doug Mc Masters: Well, if I was to ask you that question, I think many of you would come up very quickly with an answer.
Doug Mc Masters: We have the first 11 chapters of Genesis and we have chapters 12 to 50.
Doug Mc Masters: How many of you would have thought that would have been a good way to divide it up?
Doug Mc Masters: How many of you are afraid to do that Because I'm asking you the question, right.
Doug Mc Masters: Well, I think that's not a bad way to do it, and I think it's a very good way to do it, because we have the origin story in Genesis 1, and we move up through to chapter 11, and we have just moving, you know, into the table of nations and some of the genealogies there, and then boom, there's Abram and everything seems to focus on him and slows quite a ways down.
Doug Mc Masters: So it'd be easy to see a division there.
Doug Mc Masters: But there's something going on to the book in Genesis which might not be quite so apparent to everyone, because interspersed within Genesis are 10 repetitions of a word, toledotot in Hebrew, and that word can be translated the account of lines of descent, the descendants, the genealogical record, the family line, something along that line, and you will see it.
Doug Mc Masters: For instance, let's go to Genesis, chapter 2 and verse 4.
Doug Mc Masters: Right after we have the first chapter and a bit in the book of Genesis, we come to verse 4 and it says this is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, and there we see the Toledot, or the account of, or the lines of descent of, or the descendants, or the geological record of creation.
Doug Mc Masters: And then you go to chapter 5 and verse 1, in verse 1, and you will see this is the written count of Adam's line and it uses the exact same word.
Doug Mc Masters: And I'm not going to take you to all 10, but chapter 6.
Doug Mc Masters: In verse 9, you'll see that about Noah, chapter 10, in verse 1, you'll see it about Noah's sons, and then it splinters into one of Noah's sons in chapter 11 and verse 10, the genealogy of Shem.
Doug Mc Masters: And then, right before chapter 12, in Genesis 11 and verse 27, you read this is the account of Terah, who is the father of Abram.
Doug Mc Masters: You get to chapter 25 and verse 12, the genealogy of Ishmael, chapter 25 and verse 19,.
Doug Mc Masters: The genealogy of Isaac, chapter 36 and verse 1, the genealogy of Esau, and then chapter 37 and verse 2, all the way to the end of the book, the genealogy of Jacob.
Doug Mc Masters: These 10 divisions, these 10 statements of the word Toledot are what give us the structure of the book of Genesis Toledot, t-o-l-e-d-o-t-h.
Doug Mc Masters: And they don't say quite so isish as we do, so right.
Doug Mc Masters: However, this is where we get the book, or the name of the book, genesis, from, because the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, every time Toledot is stated in these 10 places, they use the word genesis, genesis, genesis.
Doug Mc Masters: So instead of saying Toledo, transliterating it into Greek, they use the word genesis.
Doug Mc Masters: And this is why we call our first book of the Bible Genesis, because it comes from these 10 statements.
Doug Mc Masters: Because it comes from these 10 statements and the term Genesis in Greek carries a larger meaning than what Toledot does.
Doug Mc Masters: It means birth or beginnings, birth or beginnings.
Doug Mc Masters: Now, why this structure?
Doug Mc Masters: Why these 10 statements?
Doug Mc Masters: Well, there's several reasons.
Doug Mc Masters: First of all, it stresses the importance of origins.
Doug Mc Masters: Genesis meaning birth or beginning.
Doug Mc Masters: Obviously, this is the birth or the beginning of each of these lines.
Doug Mc Masters: So we can see that and it works well with the beginning of creation, the beginning of humanity, the beginning of family, the beginning of work, the beginning of humanity, the beginning of family, the beginning of work, the beginning of sin, the beginning of the promises of God.
Doug Mc Masters: But there's a deeper reason, I think.
Doug Mc Masters: By using this sort of family tree structure, all of humanity is able to find its roots and its origin in one couple Adam and Eve.
Doug Mc Masters: Because everybody, as branched out as we are, returns back here, every variety of humanity, every way we divide ourselves, we can bring ourselves back to one couple.
Doug Mc Masters: And when you get to Genesis, chapter 5 and verse 1, we read something about this first couple.
Doug Mc Masters: It says to us this this is the written account of Adam's line.
Doug Mc Masters: That's all of us, mind you.
Doug Mc Masters: When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God.
Doug Mc Masters: He created them male and female and blessed them.
Doug Mc Masters: During the times of the writing that Moses wrote, only royalty would claim any divine origin.
Doug Mc Masters: They would trace their line back to the gods in order to give them some sense of dignity and sovereignty and right of dominion.
Doug Mc Masters: What does the Bible say?
Doug Mc Masters: Every single human has an origin from royalty.
Doug Mc Masters: Every one of us, not just the kings, not just the rulers, not just the powerful people who sway nations, everybody, everybody, everybody, everybody.
Doug Mc Masters: This structure of genealogy also shows us the significance of descent, which is important in Scripture.
Doug Mc Masters: This is why, in two of the Gospels we have a genealogy about Jesus.
Doug Mc Masters: That line of descent is very important.
Doug Mc Masters: Something else here Moses is able to trace not only the historical roots of all humanity.
Doug Mc Masters: He's able to sort of use this branch structure to focus his attention rather rapidly on one part of it.
Doug Mc Masters: We see Adam and all the people, and then we see him pulling a thread out of that and tracing it there, and then it spreads, and then he grabs another one and says this is the one we're going to focus on.
Doug Mc Masters: So it brings all of us very quickly to a place where we can concentrate on one line out of all the lines of humanity and realize our connection to that one line, and that's where the narrative slows down.
Doug Mc Masters: Line.
Doug Mc Masters: And that's where the narrative slows down.
Doug Mc Masters: The first five of these genealogies moves us rather rapidly and the last five slow us down dramatically.
Doug Mc Masters: The last five take up some 80% of the book of Genesis and this is why we have that 1 to 11, 12 to 50 division.
Doug Mc Masters: That's very common to us.
Doug Mc Masters: Now let's focus on what I think is more significant than these things.
Doug Mc Masters: This just gets us to a point.
Doug Mc Masters: What do we discover in the book of Genesis?
Doug Mc Masters: Well, the first thing that we discover is the reason for reality, that big question why is there something rather than nothing?
Doug Mc Masters: The reason for reality?
Doug Mc Masters: The answer in that very first, the very first words in the beginning, god created the heavens and the earth.
Doug Mc Masters: These are the first words, not just of Genesis, but of the Old Testament, of the whole Bible.
Doug Mc Masters: Everything is based on this.
Doug Mc Masters: These seven Hebrew words speak about the seven days of creation and the seven pronouncements of good that God makes in those days.
Doug Mc Masters: Genesis, in a masterpiece of literature, opens us up to all of God's purpose plan for humanity, and you can feel the threads of it echoed in John's prologue in the beginning.
Doug Mc Masters: It opens up for us a picture of God's magnificent accomplishment.
Doug Mc Masters: There, in the first chapter we discover in very intimate ways of a personal God and his creation, and it gives us an understanding, a theological understanding of reality that the world is a product of God's deliberate purpose.
Doug Mc Masters: By God's deliberate plan and his intimate activity, creation and reality materialize at the voice of God, at his command.
Doug Mc Masters: He speaks, and immediately it is so, and he speaks, and immediately it is so, and we see it all work together in beautiful symmetry as these six days sort of paralleled, three against three, capstoned by the seventh day of rest.
Doug Mc Masters: You might ask yourself why am I making a point of this?
Doug Mc Masters: Because this discussion about the existence of reality, the way the scriptures describe it, is quite a contrast to the literature of Moses' day.
Doug Mc Masters: If you were to go over to Babylon or to other places in the Near East and read their literature of the origins of all that we know, you would discover that there were gods who were often rather angry with one another and fighting, that the sun and the moon and the stars were important deities and that there were sea monsters in all of the oceans that were demonically energized.
Doug Mc Masters: And if you were to go to the British Library, as I have, and see the Enuma Elish, which is the epic of creation by the Babylonians, and you would find there that Marduk conquers Tiamat and he takes Tiamat and crushes her skull, splits her in two and takes part of her body to make the heavens and part of her body to make the earth.
Doug Mc Masters: Her tears drop and make the rivers Euphrates and Tigris, and her tail thrown into the expanse is what has made the Milky Way.
Doug Mc Masters: If you were to read further in the Epic of Creation, you would find that Marduk took her consort and that killed him and then took some of his blood and mixed it with the ground and formed humanity.
Doug Mc Masters: What does the Bible have to say about that kind of creation view?
Doug Mc Masters: Instead of a big warfare, instead of deities at enmity with each other, fighting chaos and rage, with all sorts of other sordid things that I won't even get into tonight, we see that God speaks and things are.
Doug Mc Masters: He doesn't have to fight to bring about creation.
Doug Mc Masters: He simply commands it to be so.
Doug Mc Masters: Instead of those raging, demonically controlled beasts in the oceans, the whales are playing away, as God made them to be the sun and the moon.
Doug Mc Masters: They're not deities, they're simply instruments to guide the seasons and to bring light the stars.
Doug Mc Masters: They hardly get a mention at all in the book of Genesis.
Doug Mc Masters: The world isn't divine itself.
Doug Mc Masters: It's just a reflection of God's divine glory.
Doug Mc Masters: The world is not a dangerous place of chaos.
Doug Mc Masters: It's not a place full of vengeful wrath and conflict.
Doug Mc Masters: It was made safe, it was made secure.
Doug Mc Masters: It was made as a place to thrive, to flourish, to rest, to relate.
Doug Mc Masters: You see how important that is.
Doug Mc Masters: We read this and we're asking questions that the Bible's not answering at the moment.
Doug Mc Masters: It's giving us a different apologetic God's good purposes of creation, not done in chaos, but done with controlled consent and determination.
Doug Mc Masters: What else do we learn in the book of Genesis?
Doug Mc Masters: We learn of relationships, relationships, ultimately our most important relationship, that of the regal one, the creator, with us, his viceroys, his representatives, taking his sovereign rule and exercising it on his behalf on earth, where he created us, when we get to day six of creation, we see the climax of God's days of forming all things Day one, day two, day three, day four, day five.
Doug Mc Masters: Everything is made by God's command.
Doug Mc Masters: But there's something different about this last creation of humanity.
Doug Mc Masters: God speaks, not a word of command but a word of relationship.
Doug Mc Masters: Let us make man in our image, let us make man in our image, and in this moment we see that humanity emerges from the divine relationship of the Father, the Son and the Spirit that we were made for relationships, by a relationship, by a relating God, and he makes us male and female so that we might be, side by side, fruitful and multiplying, filling the earth and having dominion in it.
Doug Mc Masters: As I said a moment ago, in the world of the Bible only kings claim to be made in the image of God.
Doug Mc Masters: Of the Bible, only kings claim to be made in the image of God.
Doug Mc Masters: But Genesis here states that every one of us are, every one of us are put here as God's representatives, bearing his royal status, exercising his dominion, but to do so in relationship with him and in glad relationship with one another.
Doug Mc Masters: You see, that divine-human relationship turns into a human-creation relationship, and we are to exercise that relationship.
Doug Mc Masters: When we acknowledge the first relationship, the relationship between God and humanity is focused in on.
Doug Mc Masters: In chapter one, we have the bigger picture.
Doug Mc Masters: In chapter two we zero in just on this couple and we see God acting like a potter to take up dirt and forming a man, but then we see him acting like an artisan and taking part of Adam and shaping a wife for him, eve.
Doug Mc Masters: Not only do we notice that, but we also see that the words for God are changed.
Doug Mc Masters: When he's creating everything else, he's Elohim, he's God, but when he speaks with humanity, he's Yahweh, he's a covenant-keeping God, he's a God of relationship with us.
Doug Mc Masters: In a way, he's not in relationship with other things, and we show that this sovereign God, this creator God, condescends to have relationship with us, A theme that runs all through Scripture I will be your God and you will be my people and it's evidenced most intimately in Jesus.
Doug Mc Masters: And the word became flesh and dwelled among us.
Doug Mc Masters: The first Adam and Eve were created to maintain the garden, to develop it to its fullest potential.
Doug Mc Masters: They were allowed to have free run of creation.
Doug Mc Masters: They could eat and enjoy everything there was on earth, except for one tree, tree of knowledge and good and evil.
Doug Mc Masters: The tree that represented the sin of moral autonomy, the tree that would be the place where they would seek to erase the boundary between God and humanity and by eating that forbidden fruit, they would seek for themselves the autonomy to determine what was right and what was good.
Doug Mc Masters: But as it was originally designed, the garden was a place of relationship, of enjoyment, of bountiful work, fruitful work, and of rest, and of rest.
Doug Mc Masters: What else do we learn in the book of Genesis?
Doug Mc Masters: We learn of ruin, not just reality, not just relationship, but also of ruin.
Doug Mc Masters: The avalanche of sin and death comes flying down the mountain of creation very quickly, and we see it in Genesis, chapter 3.
Doug Mc Masters: The writer, though using colorful ways of describing it, tells us about real people in a real place, tempting to really eradicate a divine human relationship and boundary.
Doug Mc Masters: The serpent, the first speaker and his first topic is God.
Doug Mc Masters: He's the first theologian.
Doug Mc Masters: Someone said he's the first person in the Bible to talk about God.
Doug Mc Masters: He's the first theologian.
Doug Mc Masters: Someone said he's the first person in the Bible to talk about God, and he calls into question God's character when the divine prohibition is raised up for discussion.
Doug Mc Masters: He speaks lies about God.
Doug Mc Masters: He speaks insinuating questions about God's character and God's goodness and God's purposes behind the prohibition.
Doug Mc Masters: But when he speaks about God, he goes back to that creator language, elohim.
Doug Mc Masters: He doesn't use the word Yahweh, he doesn't use the covenant name of God, because he doesn't know God relationally.
Doug Mc Masters: He only knows about God and so he can only speak about him as Elohim and not the Lord God.
Doug Mc Masters: He doesn't know him in personal relationship.
Doug Mc Masters: And Adam and Eve chose to sin.
Doug Mc Masters: They chose the things of this world rather than the things of God.
Doug Mc Masters: They chose to be the determiners of what is right and good rather than to listen to what God says about what is good and what is right.
Doug Mc Masters: And the unity of our relationship, as we were designed, was broken, and immediately flooding in was shame and guilt and accusation.
Doug Mc Masters: They sought to hid their nakedness from God.
Doug Mc Masters: They tried to improvise it with some clothing.
Doug Mc Masters: They hid from God among the trees.
Doug Mc Masters: What was once a joy, god's presence, is now to them a threat that they want to be rid of.
Doug Mc Masters: God enters in and calls them all to question and judgment and curse results, first to the serpent, then to Eve and then to Adam.
Doug Mc Masters: We'll get to the serpent in just a moment.
Doug Mc Masters: But Eve and someone said this and I said it so well, I'm just going to read it.
Doug Mc Masters: The woman, which the Hebrew word is Esau or Esau, made from man, esh.
Doug Mc Masters: So you can hear the cognitive connection there.
Doug Mc Masters: Esh and Esau, they're so closely related.
Doug Mc Masters: The same word one's just masculine, the other one's feminine, ending Was made to be a companion and a co-ruler with Adam and because of the fall she becomes a competitor and an opponent and she can only bring life by suffering Adam.
Doug Mc Masters: Adam made from the earth, adamah Once, given the earth to rule, now has to struggle with the earth to live and the earth finally wins because Adam would return to Adamah, the dust.
Doug Mc Masters: We see them banished from the garden paradise.
Doug Mc Masters: We see them removed from the tree of life.
Doug Mc Masters: We see them exiled from the presence of God and from the rest of Genesis on.
Doug Mc Masters: God speaks not in the garden but from heaven down to earth.
Doug Mc Masters: So separated are we from God.
Doug Mc Masters: And we see the snowballing effect of sin in Genesis 1 through the rest of the way through chapter 3, 4, all the way to 11.
Doug Mc Masters: Chapters 3 through 9, the word curse is mentioned five times.
Doug Mc Masters: In Genesis 4, we see the first murder In the flood.
Doug Mc Masters: We see the world gripped by violence and bloodshed After the flood.
Doug Mc Masters: We see the Tower of Babel constructed as humanity tries to storm heaven once again, to erase any kind of divine human relationship and boundary.
Doug Mc Masters: We see humanity in all of its community, in all of its ability, in all of its technology set dead against God.
Doug Mc Masters: All of our skill and all of our craft is marred by sin and death.
Doug Mc Masters: This once pristine creation now becomes a source of pain and degradation and death.
Doug Mc Masters: By the time we get to the end of chapter 11, we have to be asking ourselves is there any solution to the way we are?
Doug Mc Masters: And that brings us to the fourth thing we discover in the book of Genesis Not just reality, not just relationship, not just ruin, but redemption.
Doug Mc Masters: Redemption From the earliest moments after humanity's revolt.
Doug Mc Masters: We see God is merciful.
Doug Mc Masters: He told them that when you eat of this tree you will die.
Doug Mc Masters: Did they die that day?
Doug Mc Masters: Physically, they did not.
Doug Mc Masters: God held back the full display of his furious wrath and let them live, let humanity continue to exist.
Doug Mc Masters: Yes, the effects of the fall were there and death was marching its way to their death.
Doug Mc Masters: And yes, they were separated from God and their spiritual death was very real and palpable.
Doug Mc Masters: But there was mercy in judgment.
Doug Mc Masters: Even in that first expression was mercy in judgment, even in that first expression.
Doug Mc Masters: And then, when God turns his attention to the serpent, he speaks to Adam and Eve words of hope that something was going to happen.
Doug Mc Masters: When he speaks and curses the serpent, he expresses a limitation of its power.
Doug Mc Masters: You will be on your belly, you will not be as powerful as you think you are right now and you will come to a final end.
Doug Mc Masters: In Genesis 3.15, I'll put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers.
Doug Mc Masters: He will crush your head and you will strike his heel.
Doug Mc Masters: Those words that were not addressed to Adam and Eve must have caused them to wonder what's the next chapter going to be like?
Doug Mc Masters: When is that going to happen?
Doug Mc Masters: Chapter going to be like?
Doug Mc Masters: When is that going to happen?
Doug Mc Masters: This promise of victory of humanity over the one that brought them into the very place of their demise?
Doug Mc Masters: Conflict between the seed of the woman and the serpent would eventually end in the death of the serpent.
Doug Mc Masters: So Adam and Eve were told to look for one who would come from woman, who would be the one who would end the serpent and restore the conditions of paradise.
Doug Mc Masters: Interesting in Luke, chapter 10, in verse 17, jesus had sent out emissaries, two by two, to proclaim the kingdom of heaven.
Doug Mc Masters: And they came back to him and said Lord, even the demons submit to us in your name.
Doug Mc Masters: And he replied I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.
Doug Mc Masters: I have given you authority to trample on snakes and scorpions and overcome all the power of the enemy.
Doug Mc Masters: Nothing will harm you.
Doug Mc Masters: There was something about Jesus' name that meant that snakes and scorpions, and the evil one, were put on notice, that death was on its way for them.
Doug Mc Masters: And so Paul picks that up in Romans, chapter 16 and verse 20, and says the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.
Doug Mc Masters: The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you, under your feet.
Doug Mc Masters: The grace of the Lord Jesus be with you.
Doug Mc Masters: And then, in that vision of eternal things Revelation 12 and verses 9 to 11, the great dragon was hurled down, that ancient serpent called the devil or Satan, who leads the whole world astray.
Doug Mc Masters: He was hurled to the earth and his angels with him.
Doug Mc Masters: And I heard a loud voice in heaven say now has come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Messiah For the accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God, day and night has been hurled down, and they triumphed over him by the blood of the lamb and by the word of their testimony.
Doug Mc Masters: They did not love their lives so much as to shrink from death.
Doug Mc Masters: This first announcement of the gospel, announcing the conflict of the seed of the woman and the serpent, would truly end with the death of death and the death of the introducer of death to humanity, the devil himself.
Doug Mc Masters: This conqueror would be a human, a human descendant, and so the Toledot genealogies, the family lines of humanity.
Doug Mc Masters: Those are important statements.
Doug Mc Masters: Where would this one come from?
Doug Mc Masters: Would it be this line or this line?
Doug Mc Masters: This line or this line?
Doug Mc Masters: Where would the threat of redemption trace itself?
Doug Mc Masters: This is why Genesis is written the way it is.
Doug Mc Masters: It shows us that ultimate triumph of the seed of the woman would come through this genealogical structure.
Doug Mc Masters: One day, people wondered if they were part of it.
Doug Mc Masters: Adam cries out I've gotten a man, the Lord, could it be him?
Doug Mc Masters: It wasn't.
Doug Mc Masters: Noah's father names his son in hope that he would be a deliverer.
Doug Mc Masters: Was he Only in picture form, not the actual one who would crush the head of the serpent?
Doug Mc Masters: Abraham was given promises, promises that the day would come through him, and so we see the narrowing of that statement of promise.
Doug Mc Masters: Come through him, and so we see the narrowing of that statement of promise.
Doug Mc Masters: The word blessing is used often instead of curses when God speaks to Abraham in chapter 12.
Doug Mc Masters: Curses, curses, curses and curses again in chapters three through nine, but blessing, blessing, upon blessing in chapter 12.
Doug Mc Masters: Upon blessing in chapter 12.
Doug Mc Masters: Abram represents for all of us.
Doug Mc Masters: Something about him brings us the way back to paradise.
Doug Mc Masters: What's that going to look like?
Doug Mc Masters: Through his descendants?
Doug Mc Masters: We read in the book of Genesis that they came into the land just as Abram left his own to come to this place of promise, and he builds an altar there, staking a claim for God in that land.
Doug Mc Masters: But, interestingly enough, as his progeny unfolds in the land and eventually leave it for some time, the only land that the families buy are plots for burial.
Doug Mc Masters: Doesn't seem like they're owning the land at all.
Doug Mc Masters: But they die in hope, even wanting their very bones to be brought back, because they think that promise is going to be fulfilled.
Doug Mc Masters: We see in the patriarchal stories the seed of the woman triumphing over infertility, over captivity, over oppression and even over famine.
Doug Mc Masters: This family won't die.
Doug Mc Masters: It keeps going on.
Doug Mc Masters: It keeps going on and we find, at the very end of it, that Israel speaks to one son, judah, and tells him that he would rule the nations.
Doug Mc Masters: And again we're given a hint of where to look for this seed of the woman who would crush the head of the serpent, for this seed of the woman who would crush the head of the serpent.
Doug Mc Masters: Eventually we get to a person named Jesus, who was introduced to us by way of genealogies, and we discover that he's a son of Adam, he's a son of Abraham, he's a son of David, he comes from the tribe of Judah.
Doug Mc Masters: He's the one, he's the one, he's the one.
Doug Mc Masters: And Paul brings up a recognition to us that this is not just Jesus the Christ, but he's also described as the second Adam, the second Adam.
Doug Mc Masters: And he tells us that all who are in the first Adam die because he disobeyed, that all who are in the first Adam die because he disobeyed, but all who are in the second Adam live because he obeyed and he died to cover our disobediences.
Doug Mc Masters: So we learn of reality, we learn of relationships, we learn of ruin.
Doug Mc Masters: We learn of relationships, we learn of ruin.
Doug Mc Masters: We learn of the Redeemer in the book of Genesis.
Doug Mc Masters: But there's one last thing, if time will allow me.
Doug Mc Masters: Bob said I only had 30 minutes, so I'm trying to get this done.
Doug Mc Masters: What do we see in the book of Genesis?
Doug Mc Masters: We see the beginning of the end.
Doug Mc Masters: In Genesis 1 and 2, we see creation, the cosmos, humanity, relationship with God, all things in pristine condition.
Doug Mc Masters: We see us relating with him and one another and the rest of creation in perfect harmony.
Doug Mc Masters: God places Adam and Eve in the garden that contains the tree of life.
Doug Mc Masters: We see Adam and Eve there in all of life's fullness and abundance.
Doug Mc Masters: And we see in Genesis 1.28, god blesses them and says be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and govern it.
Doug Mc Masters: We see God's blessings on them, yes, complicated by chapter three, the fracture of that relationship and the story of the Bible all the way up until Revelation, chapter 20.
Doug Mc Masters: But the last two chapters of the book of Revelation bring something else in.
Doug Mc Masters: When you read the last two chapters of Revelation, you discover all the language of Genesis 1 and 2 coming right back again.
Doug Mc Masters: And there it is, at the very end that the end of the Bible brings us back to the beginning of the Bible when we started with everything in harmony with us, in perfect relationship with the covenant creator, god, who is condescended to relate to us and to bless us, because that's what he wants to do and that's where we're going.
Doug Mc Masters: And the story starts here.
Doug Mc Masters: Let's pray, our Heavenly Father, we thank you for the word of God.
Doug Mc Masters: We thank you for how it opens up to us something we could never devise of our own, a recognition of all that has been made and why and how you are so intimately involved in it and in us as your creation.
Doug Mc Masters: We thank you, father, that your purposes are pure and right and holy and full of love and mercy and grace.
Doug Mc Masters: Lord, I pray that, as we continue down this road of Route 66, that all of these things that have been introduced to us in the book of Genesis will become more real, more significant, more influential in our lives.
Doug Mc Masters: More influential in our lives that we might live our life the way we ought, in relationship to you and faith and obedience, recognition for full and necessary dependence upon you for everything life, breath, eternity.
Doug Mc Masters: And that, father, we might find our lives ordered more and more by your purpose plan, as we come to know you better, by visiting each and every one of the books that you've given to us to read and to understand and to live by, and we pray Father, it would truly bring you glory in this place.
Doug Mc Masters: In Christ's name, amen.