Genesis Overview
Genesis Overview-2025
If you have your Bible’s with you, you can open them and go all the way to the very beginning of your Bible—the book of Genesis, because we’re going to be starting a series in the book of Genesis this morning. As you’re doing that, I’m going to put a picture up (Fox and Crow). Have a close look at the picture. What do you think is happening in this picture?
a. If you have a great imagination, you’re able to come up with some story about the fox and the crow—but you know that unless the event in the picture can be placed in the context of the story it comes from, we’re left guessing what meaning its author intends….
b. Now look at the image again with more details provided. (Fox and Crow Revisited).
c. You understand what’s happening now between this fox and this crow because you have some knowledge about the whole story surrounding this episode. When you’re told there is a famine in the forest, and that crafty animals like the fox will use devious strategies to get hold of food, then you begin to see why the fox is flattering the crow.
d. You need to know something of the beginning, the middle and the end of the story…then you can begin to make sense of any episode in it. And the reality is this is not only true of fictional stories like the fox and the crow, but also of life. We need some sense of the “big story” of the world before any event in our lives make sense…
e. Genesis gives an understanding of God; a view of the world and our relationship to it that is unparalleled; it makes sense of the beauty we see and experience, while also making sense of the pain and suffering we endure.
f. Genesis gives us the big story that helps us make sense of God, our world and our relationship to it…you see, what Genesis does, is it tell us the ultimate true story—It’s the ultimate origins story. It tells us how the Lord in love, created the world and humanity, and humanity screwed it up, but the Lord determines to rescue and redeem His creation and Genesis tells that story.
g. Now, this morning, we’re going to do an overview of the entire book. We’ll look at the book from 30,000 feet and see the shape of it and just like when you’re flying, we’ll see the highest vistas and the lowest points as we go…and then we’ll come back next week and we’ll start working our way through section by section…okay?
II. A little bit about the book, itself.
a. The name Genesis means “beginnings or origins” so the book of the Beginnings—it tells us the beginning of everything except God; The universe, people, marriage, family, sin, death, governments, languages, the nation of Israel and the plan of redemption…it’s against this backdrop which the rest of the story of God is told.
b. Well, who wrote it? If you’ve read anything on the topic, you know there’s scholarly debate about who wrote Genesis, because the book itself doesn’t tell us. In a strict sense, Genesis and in fact, the first five books of the Bible—known as the Torah to Jews or the Pentateuch to Greeks is anonymous, however, early Jewish and Christian tradition is virtually unanimous in ascribing Genesis and the entire Pentateuch to Moses.
c. And the key to the discussion in my mind is what did Jesus believe and teach? Jesus is the interpretive key to all of Scripture and in several places, particularly Matthew 8:4 and John 5:46 Jesus ascribes the Pentateuch, including Genesis, to Moses.
d. Now, does that mean that Moses wrote every little thing? Probably not because it’s hard to write about your own burial; but Moses collated material; he was the recipient of revelation from God and a witness to the redemptive acts of God and he recorded them.
e. So Moses writes and puts together Genesis around the 15th century BC, so 1400 BC, after the Exodus, and it comes under his authority and Jesus, the Lord, viewed it as authoritative.
f. Well, how does Moses record this history? There are several ways to outline the book….
g. The Jews had one way of outlining the book, which is based on each time you read, “these are the generations of,” so you would have an 11 point outline tracing the genealogy from Adam to Joseph….that’s the Hebraic way of doing it, but we’re English speakers in 2025, almost 2026, so let me give you the easiest outline to remember.
h. The Book of Genesis can be broken down into 2 sections. (Put up chart)
i. Chapters 1-11 Moses focuses on Four Incredibly Important Moments that impact our lives still today…and then….
ii. Chapters 12-50 Moses focuses on Four Incredibly Important Men (Moses begins to focus on the line of Abraham because the Lord promises that through Abraham’s line one would come who all the nations of the earth would be blessed by…and Christ is the seed of Abraham who saves people from every tribe and nations….
i. Now, with that outline, let’s get into the book a little bit….now as I mentioned the first 11 chapters are about 4 incredibly important moments that still impact our lives today…and it begins of course, with the creation.
III. The Creation Account answers the question of (Who is God and Who Are We?)
a. Look at verse 1, read verse 1: Those 10 words shape everything else and lay the foundational piece to our understanding of who God is, how the world came about and who we are in relationship to Him and His Creation.
b. The first piece of the big story is there is a God (and it’s not you). There is an eternal, uncreated being responsible for everything we see and can’t see. He creates and sustains His universe by the power of His Word, and therefore all of creation belongs to Him…
c. The Bible begins with and is primarily all about God: Who He is. What He is like. What He has done in history, and What He promises to do in the future. We learn in the creation account that He is self-existent, eternal, sovereign, powerful, creative, relational and moral.
d. So the Bible is primarily about God and secondarily about us (but don’t confuse the order). The creation account tells us how humanity came about and our existence in God’s world. Look at chapter 1, verse 26
e. Read Verses 1:26-28: We’ll talk about this in the weeks ahead, but note humanity alone bears God’s image, which means we’re the pinnacle of God’s creation and we’re to reflect something of His character, creativity and His communicable attributes.
f. And humanity is entrusted with the stewardship of His creation—we’re to enjoy it and engage it, without exploiting it. We’re to delight in it, and enjoy it, but we must not confuse the creation with the Creator—He alone is worthy of our worship.
g. We’re told in the creation story that we were created for deep and lasting relationships—first with the Lord (we were never supposed to live life apart from Him) and then with one another—we were made for relationships—the height of which, in this age, is marriage—a male and female bonded together…and by the way, since marriage is God’s idea, we don’t have the right to tinker with it…
h. So the first two chapters of Genesis are incredibly important—we’re told of the self-existent, creative God and that humanity is the pinnacle of His creation—which means each one of us should be treated with dignity, honor and respect…the first two chapters of this big story are glorious….humanity is in full orbed peace—peace with God, peace with creation, peace with oneself, and peace with each other….but then something goes terrible wrong—like all good stories, a conflict arises….
i. And beginning in chapter 3 we’re told about the Fall
IV. And the Fall answers the question of (Why is the world the way it is, and why am I the way I am)? Why is the world so broken and filled with envy, strife and war…and why are we so broken internally which gets expressed outwardly in our relationship with the Lord and one another---all of it is the result of the fall.
a. The Fall was a moment with lasting consequences. Think about it. Our ancient parents, in the paradise of the past, were encouraged to eat from every tree as they desired, except one, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
b. And Satan comes along in the form of a serpent and twists God’s Word—look at chapter 3, verse 1
c. Read Verses 1-6: Adam and Eve chose to replace God’s Word with man’s word—they chose to listen to some voice other than the Lord’s voice—some word, other than the Lord’s word and it had devastating effects on them and us…
d. The Fall brought sin and a broken relationship with God into every subsequent life, and every part of life has been affected by sin. Because of our first parents’ rebellion against God, every single one of us has inherited a sin nature—a built in propensity to live independently from God and in defiance of Him.
e. Death was promised as the penalty of sin, and it comes fast and furious. In chapter 4, Cain was envious of his brother, Abel, and murdered him. In chapter 5 the judgment of God for sin begins to be felt rather forcibly….
f. Roll through 5:5, 8, 11, 14, 17, 20, 27, 31)—the fall-out of sin is real and lasting—not only did we inherit from our first parents the propensity to sin, but the certain penalty of death.
g. How will this be remedied. Can it be remedied? And if so, who will do it? The Lord curses the serpent for his part in man’s fall, and promises that through a descendant of Eve, one will come who will defeat Satan, Sin and Death and set humanity and the creation back into a right relationship with the Lord. God is taking the initiative to forgive and restore despite man’s disobedience and He’ll do this through a descendent of Eve, who will be completely obedient to God, and will reverse the curse completely by crushing the Serpent of old….but as the great theologian Patrick Swayze says in the movie Roadhouse, “it’s going to get worse before it gets better.” And that’s exactly what we see next with the flood.
V. The Flood (which answers the question of, Will God Judge Us and Is there a way Escape His Judgment).
a. The virus of sin kept spreading. The first sin separates man from God, and a husband from his wife, and corrupts the creation, and the next major sin murder between brothers. You have polygamy taking place; you have government by brute force; you have new expression of sin popping up with each new generation.
b. We’re told in chapter 6:5 that “The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” So are things getting better or worse? WORSE!
c. Read Verse 6: The Lord was grieved that His creation, which was originally good is now filled with wickedness….and so the Lord decides to cleanse the earth—the flood was His way of washing away the moral dirt from the earth---just like if you have a shirt that’s covered in dirt, you submerge and scrub it---and the Lord brings wholesale judgment against human sin.
d. The one exception was a man by the name of Noah. God tells him to construct a large boat—one commentator writes, “this is a vessel that is 440 feet long, 73 feet wide, 44 feet high, and yielding a displacement of 43,000 tons (Victor Hamilton, The New International Commentary on the Old Testament, pg. 282).
e. The Lord gives Noah the blueprints to built this large vessel—and this is important because He does not entrust the means of salvation to human imagination…so He tells Noah exactly how to built it….and Noah hears God’s Word and he responds in faith and starts building it.
f. Eventually Noah loads up his family and a male and a female of all the land-dwelling creatures on the ark…skip down to chapter 7, verse 16
g. Read 7:16-23: That is terrifying!
h. The flood teaches us two important truths.
i. First, God will not be mocked. You can’t ignore Him God and live in defiance of His Word and Ways without consequences.
ii. The second thing we learn—God’s Grace is Available.
i. In chapter 6, verse 8 we read, “But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.” And the word favor there is another word for God’s grace—well, how did Noah find God’s grace? By taking God at His Word and responding in faith….by the way, that’s how anyone is saved…by God’s grace through faith….
j. So the Lord through the flood cleanses the earth and starts over with a man of faith and you would think at this point things would get better because the earth has been cleansed…but it doesn’t because while the external may be washed, it’s the heart that has be to cleansed completely…..and the next incredibly important moment shows that humanity has not changed….
VI. The Dispersion: Answers the Questions of Exactly How Arrogant Are We and Will We Ever Learn?
a. In Genesis 11, a unified humanity tries to cast off the restraint of God through the construction of a tower. (Show artist rendering). Most scholars understand the tower they were building to be a ziggurat; essentially a square tower—several of their footprints can still be found in Iraq and Iran—and their quite large. One from around this time period had a foundation that was 200 feet by 150 feet and roughly 80 feet in the air….and look at the motivation of their heart….look at verse 4 in chapter 11
b. Read 11:4: And what happens is God comes down and sees what is happening and is displeased by it…why?
c. Because their attempt to stay together was an act of disobedience. Remember in the beginning God gives man a very straightforward, simple and enjoyable command: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.” Then after the flood, the Lord tells Noah and his sons to be fruitful and multiply and spread out on the earth.
d. They don’t at all. They cluster together and seek to bring glory to themselves by building an identity for themselves apart from God and so the Lord in His mercy confuses the languages and disperses the people over the face of the earth. And again, I think that’s the Lord’s mercy because in making it difficult to communicate with each other---let me put it like this—we all know how fast AI advancing---the doubling of capabilities and processing power on a scale of months rather than years—with no end in sight---and that’s what would’ve happened with sin and a unified humanity—and so what the Lord does in mercy is by making it difficult to communicate, He was slowing the spread of sinful attitudes and actions….
e. Now the first eleven chapters of Genesis paints a pretty grim picture of humanity’s relationship to God…at every level humanity is a complete failure.
f. As a couple—disobeying the Lord. As a family—murder. As a community—continued evil to the point where the Lord decides to judge it with a flood and starts essentially again. And as a people---striving to make their own identity, rather than resting in the identity God’s given them as image bearers…
g. What will God do? Moses gives us the answer—the first 11 chapters focus on the human race as a whole, and now the 2nd half of the book of Genesis focuses on one particular family who goes on to become the people of Israel. And begins with four incredibly important men. (Insert 2nd half of Genesis chart). The first man we meet is Abraham….
VII. Abraham: The Grace of God is Available
a. In chapter 12, the Lord comes to Abram in the small community of Haran and tells him—look at verse 1
b. Read Verses 1-7: What a huge promise! And we read back into the story what we know and so we automatically assume that Abram would have jumped at this…but would you have? To go someplace that you knew nothing of?
c. It took a tremendous amount of faith for Abram to do so and this is why Abraham is the prototype of faith. He and his wife hear God’s promise and stake their entire futures on it.
d. And the promise is that through his seed the Lord would build a nation, and from Abraham’s line, the Rescuer would come…
e. The problem, however, is that they had no kids, and his wife, Sarah, was barren. Year after year, as they grow older and grayer, the promise was affirmed, but never fulfilled…but during that time, though Abraham’s faith wavered, he continued to trust the Lord
f. And in Genesis 15, while Abraham is downcast as he’s still waiting for the promise to be realized, the Lord came to Abraham in a vision and the Lord tells Abraham to go outside and look up toward the heavens and number the stars if he’s able, and then the Lord says, “So shall your offspring be” and we’re told in verse 6, “He believed the LORD, and he counted it to him as righteousness.”
g. Despite many years of childlessness, Abram believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness—God sees him as righteous not because of his deeds, but because of his faith in the Lord’s promise….and later, after 25 years of waiting, when Abraham was 100 years old, Issac is born….and Isaac’s birth teaches us….
VIII. Isaac: The Promises of God are Sure
a. Isaac is the promised son and his story with his father foreshadows another story between a Father and a Son, because God instructs Abraham to sacrifice the promised Son, but at the last minute God provides a substitute sacrifice. The Lord reaffirms the promise to Abraham and to Isaac that from their line would come the Messiah.
b. Later, Isaac marries Rebekah and they have twin boys, Esau and Jacob, and they’re a mess of a family—there’s favoritism and trickery, so much so that Isaac is tricked into giving the blessing to the younger son, Jacob, over the older son, Esau…and that leads us to the story of Jacob
IX. Jacob: The Power of God is Transformative
a. And Jacob is a real piece of work. His name can mean either cheater or deceiver…and in chapters 27-35, we’re told how God transforms him from being a manipulative, selfish jerk into a broken and humble man, who is then used mightily by the Lord as he has 12 sons who become the 12 tribes of Israel. And the rest of the book of Genesis focuses in on one particular son…and Joseph’s story teaches us that the providence of God is real
X. Joseph: The Providence of God is Real
a. Joseph is the favored Son who by God’s design suffers unjustly, by being sold into slavery by his brothers but rises to prominence and forgives and saves completely those who had betrayed him. He actually tells his brothers upon saving them, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives” (Gen. 50:20). Suffers unjustly, rises to power to forgive and save…who does that sound like…
b. You see the story of Joseph is the story of the Gospel in the Old Covenant—he’s the shadow of another Son who would by God’s design, suffer unjustly and yet turn out to be the true Savior.
c. And the book ends with Israel settled in Egypt…you get to the end of Genesis and you look back and you see all these beginnings-- the beginning of Creation, the beginning of humanity, the beginning of sin and evil, and then the beginning of redemption by grace, through human agency and you know what it does?
d. It reminds us of how foundational Genesis is to our lives.
XI. Why Genesis? Why Now? Here’s why—We live out of the stories we believe in…in the west, we’ve largely rejected the Biblical story, and adopted philosophical naturalism, which says you’re essentially a grown up germ, which gives you no meaning, no standard of morality, or any sense of destiny….you see we live out of the stories we believe in…you need a comprehensive story to live out of…and Genesis provides it.
a. Genesis Proclaims the True and Glorious Story of God: Genesis tells us that there is an eternal, holy being who has always existed in a loving triune relationship, and out of that love He created the universe and humanity to share in His love…He created everything we see and don’t see---Genesis makes sense of the past by proclaiming the true story of God, and we need to hear it again and again….but then…
b. Genesis Presents the True and Sad Story of Man: By willful choice humanity has been cut off from God and therefore the heart of man is continually bent inwards and profoundly evil—at our very best, we manage to live productive lives….at our worst….and the difference between the “best of us and the worst of us” isn’t all that much…we hurt each other and quickly, or slowly we destroy ourselves…and while the first point made sense of our past, this point makes sense of our present…it makes sense of why we experience heartache, pain and frustration at work. It make sense of why we deal with divorce, disease and death. It’s all the result of the Fall.
c. So Genesis proclaims the true and glorious story of God; it presents the true and sad story of man…and lastly….
d. Genesis Points Forward to the Ultimate Redemption Story: You ever wonder why we love redemption stories? ‘It’s a wonderful life…The Cinderella Man, Gran Torino…It’s because intuitively we know we were created for more!
e. And Genesis points forward to the ultimate redemption story---I hope you haven’t closed your Bibles yet…turn to the very last book of the Bible—the book of Revelation chapter 21.
f. Because what Genesis tells us makes sense of the past, gives meaning to the present and provides tremendous hope for the future because the promise of God, which we’ve already seen are sure, come true…the serpent slayer, the seed of Abraham, the son of Promise, the favored Son who suffers unjustly but rises to forgive and save completely is none other than Jesus Christ…
g. He’s Redeeming His creation, both the cosmos and humanity, He’s completely redeeming it, but better, because it can never be lost again—Adam and Eve in a garden, plunge humanity into sin through disobedience, but it’s in another Garden, the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus Christ, who Paul calls the 2nd Adam reverses the curse through His obedience even to the point of death and makes a way for you to be reconciled to God.
h. So in the second Garden, the 2nd Adam reverses the curse of the 1st Garden and makes a way for you to be with Him in the 3rd garden---turn with me to the last book of the Bible, Revelation 21
i. John, who writes the Gospel of John also writes the book of the Revelation and in Revelation 21 and 22 John is describing the New Heavens and the New Earth; the spirit realm and the material realm are merged and John sees this beautiful city, the New Jerusalem and its’ breathtaking in its beauty…
j. And skip down to verse 22… And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. 23 And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. 24 By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, 25 and its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. 26 They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. 27 But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb's book of life. Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb 2 through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. 3 No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. 4 They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. 5 And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.”
k. In the middle of this beautiful city is a Garden—it’s a Garden City really, and it’s there where we will stand face to face with the Lord and we will dwell with Him permanently …is that not amazing!?! The complete redemption of humanity and the creation! Amazing.
l. Now ask yourself—what is there not to like about this story? It’s one story telling of how God created humanity in a garden and humanity screwed it up, and God sends His Son, Jesus to come and die in our place, for our sin in another garden, so that we can be reconciled to God and live with Him eternally in a perfect garden city. This is what Genesis ultimately is about…and what our lives are to be about!