Scripture Genesis 50:20-21
The Famous One
(and the not so famous ones)
Redemption, from the beginning!
Romans 8:18-28
I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.
We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will.
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.
We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will.
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.
Even those outside Christianity understand this principle – Consider this Zen Parable
Once upon a time there was an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit. “Such bad luck,” they said sympathetically.
“Maybe,” the farmer replied.
The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. “How wonderful,” the neighbors exclaimed.
“Maybe,” replied the old man.
The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune.
“Maybe,” answered the farmer.
The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son’s leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out.
“Maybe,” said the farmer.
The book is designed to follow two main parts.
Chapters 1-11 tell the story of God in the whole world. (like through a telescope)
Chapters 12-50 tell the story about God and one family - Abraham’s family, and how these two parts relate. (like through a microscope)
SING “Let’s start at the beginning, it’s a very good place to start.” The first part of Genesis begins with the Creation Story where God creates everything.
To quickly explain creation I will borrow an idea from the philosopher Aristotle and add my own simple understanding to it. Let me begin by asking a few questions:
Where is a person heading from the moment they are born? Toward death.
Where is a star headed from the moment it first exists? Burn out – or Death.
Where is all matter headed from the moment it first exists? Extinction – or Death.
One more question.
Does matter come into existence on its own, or does it come from the existence of other matter? ie a big piece of matter blows up and we then have many little pieces of matter or many small pieces of matter come together to create a larger piece of matter. That means that all matter has a beginning and an end. No physical matter is eternal. Since no physical matter is eternal – it all had to come form some previous material –
Where did the first matter come from? There is only one answer, it had to be created from something that already existed and that thing that already existed had to exist before there was any matter, and how did that thing come into being unless that thing were eternal? Something had to exist before anything else existed, and if there was nothing to create the first thing, than it stands to reason that first thing is GOD!
God has always existed before there was anything else. The book of Genesis begins at the moment when the eternal God decided to bring matter into being out of nothing.
John 1:1-3 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.
Hebrews 11:3 By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.
Day1: God created water then spoke into existence “light”
Day 2: Atmosphere
Day 3: Dry ground and plants
Day 4: Sun, Moon, and Stars
Day 5: Birds and Sea Animals
Day 6: Land animals and Humans (Adam & Eve)
Day 7: Sabbath Rest
That all sounds nice. It was, and 6 times God says of all that he has made that it is good. When Adam (from the ground) and Eve (from Adam’s rib) God created us form previous matter he had already made; God said that was VERY GOOD. --- “Maybe”!!!
They are both individual characters but they also representative. Adam is a Hebrew word for Humanity and Eve is the Hebrew word for life and God creates them in His image. In other words, humanity is meant to reflect the creativity, the goodness and character of the Creator out into the world that He has made. They are supposed to reproduce and make cultures and neighborhoods and art and gardens and everything else, but God gives them a moral choice about how they are going to go about building this world and this is what the tree of good and evil is all about and he tells them don’t eat of the fruit of this tree or you will die.
What’s that all about? So up to now God has been the one defining and providing what is good so God is the one with the knowledge of good and evil. Now this tree represents a choice. Will the humans trust God’s definition of good and evil or are they going to seize the opportunity and define good and evil for themselves?...Adam and Eve eat the fruit?
This is the core Biblical explanation for the concept of sin, that desire to call the shots myself. It’s the inward turn of the human heart to do what’s good for me and my tribe even if it’s at the expense of you and your tribe and the problem is humans are horrible at defining good and evil without God and now that humanity has made this choice, things get really, really bad. So Genesis 3 thru 11 is about tracing this downward spiral of all humanity so Adam and Eve can’t trust each other anymore. There’s a little story about how they were naked and felt fine about it beforehand but now they feel shameful because all of a sudden Adam’s definition of good and evil might be different than Eve’s and so they hide from each other.
CAIN & ABLE
Then there’s another story of temptation where Cain is jealous of his brother Abel and he gives in and kills him.
There’s a story right after Cain (great great great grandson) named Lamech who has multiple wives and sings songs about how he’s a more violent, vengeful person than Cain ever was and he’s proud of it. Things get so bad with the human race that we God decides to just wipe us out.
THE FLOOD
We typically think of the flood story as about God being angry, but it actually begins with God’s sadness and grief about the state of his world and so out of his passion to redeem the goodness of his world, he washes it clean, but there is a glimmer of hope. He chooses Noah and his whole family, and he redeems OR saves them (and the animals) on this boat/ark. So Noah and his family are going to reboot all of humanity, they are going to show what it looks like to be a people redeemed by God.
So, Noah gets off the boat and he plants a vineyard and he gets totally plastered and then something sketchy happens in his tent with his son. It’s a tragic story and from here humanity grows again to be as bad as before which leads into the next story…
In this story you have all of the nation’s uniting together to use this new technology they have. The brick. And they want to make a name for themselves and build this big city with a huge tower that will reach up to the gods, but God knows that this city will be a nightmare and so in his mercy, he scatters the people, and all of these stories are underlining the same idea. When humans seek autonomy from God and they define good and evil for themselves, it results in a world of tragedy and death. And this leaves you wondering, is there any hope for humanity?
Yes, there is. It’s the very next story that answers that question. It’s the beginning of God’s mission to rescue, restore, and redeem His creation.
The second part of Genesis (chapters 12-50, zooms in and focuses on just one family and right in the middle is this story that links the two parts of Genesis together and helps us understand what the whole book is all about.
ABRAHAM
After the scattering at Babel there is this genealogy and it follows one of the tribes all the way down to this one guy named Abram. You probably know him as Abraham. And God starts making all these promises to Abraham like he is going to bless him and give him a ton of kids and he says that through him and his family, all the nations of the Earth are now going to find God’s blessing. So basically God is now redeeming humanity back to the goodness of the garden into his original intentions for the world. It’s like his rescue plan for humanity. That’s why the whole second half of Genesis is about this one family.
So you have Abraham, and he has a son Isaac, who has a son Jacob, and then Jacob has 12 sons, and, in each generation, God renews his promise to bless them and all nations through them. Because of this promise to use this family as a way to redeem the world, it’s pretty easy to read these stories as examples of how to be a good person. But actually, for the most part, this family is totally dysfunctional. So for example, let’s go back to Abraham. This whole story is about God giving him and his wife Sarah a family. But two different times, he basically gives Sarah away to other men by denying that she is even his wife. Then Sarah gets impatient about even having a son, so she makes Abraham sleep with her servant girl which then causes all of these other problems in the family.
ISAAC, JACOB & ESAU
So they get really old and you begin to think that there is no way they are going to have a kid of their own but then miraculously they do and Isaac is born. Isaac has two sons, Esau and Jacob and it seems like things are going pretty well. But Jacob, the younger brother wants the family’s inheritance which belongs to Esau the older brother, so he devises a plan to steal it from his father Isaac who at this point of the story is now old and blind. Who does this horrible stealing from your blind father? And then he just takes off.
JOSEPH
So Jacob goes on from there to have 12 sons, a big family, but Jacob loves his 11th son, Joseph, way more than all the others so he gives him this special technicolor dreamcoat and his brothers, because of this, come to hate him so much so that they plan on killing him (which seems bad – maybe) but they don’t. They just sell him as a slave down in Egypt. (which seems bad – maybe)
Now while in Egypt, through this crazy series of events, Joseph goes from being in a prison cell to becoming the second in command there. So later on the whole middle east falls into this lack of food security and Joseph’s brothers come down to Egypt looking for food. When they get there, who should they find as the ruler of the whole land, it is Joseph, that brother they sold into slavery. But he actually saves them from starving to death. (God redeems them physically)
So here you have it, Abraham’s great grandchildren who have done this heinous act to their brother, but God has transformed their evil into something good. And that’s exactly what Joseph says in the last paragraph in the entire book where he forgives them of their sin (God redeems them spiritually) Genesis 50:20-21
These words conclude the book because they actually summarize the message of the whole story so far. Humans keep choosing evil and we think they are messing up God’s plan, but he keeps turning their evil back into good and somehow, he is going to use this family to redeem humanity back to the garden. Later, in Egypt, God’s people will become slaves and this is going to be tragic…maybe!
Genesis 3:15 God talks directly to the serpent (the devil) and says, “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” When Satan strikes Jesus’ feet and nails them to the cross, God will crush Satan on the head and bring eternal redemption to His people by raising from the dead!
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