bible_genesis
Genesis 1-11
by Edith Shelton
Today we are going to talk about the first 11 chapters of Genesis. This is a part of the Bible that all liberals consider myth, and even some Christians who do not consider themselves liberals think this is myth rather than literal truth. Once they get to Abraham, they agree that we are dealing with real history, but before that — well, it doesn’t agree with the evolutionary theories. And, of course, evolution is true. Therefore, the first 11 chapters of Genesis are not.
We begin with that unpopular idea that God is the Creator. He created heaven and earth. The evolutionists go round and round trying to ignore the fact that things had to start somewhere and sometime — and somebody had to start it. They rule out the supernatural, more or less by definition. They just decide that there is no supernatural, so there can’t be a god that created things. The interesting thing is the way they are letting the supernatural in the back door by accepting New Age ideas.
God created the heavens and the earth. And we can see that the earth was dark, and it was covered with water. We don’t know how or why God started it out that way. But we see that His first act is to bring light on the scene. He brings light, but he also leaves darkness, and he makes a separation between them. This is the first day. We’ll talk later about how long was that day.
On the second day He takes care of the water that seems to be all over the place. He separates the water on the earth from water that belongs above it somewhere and puts an expanse in between. This expanse would be what we see as sky.
But the earth itself is still covered with water, so God commands that the waters should gather themselves in one place so dry land can appear. This may have been done by a series of earth upheavals that raised the land and left a basin for the water. Probably — or at least many people think so — the land was one complete land mass surrounded by the water. Then God commanded plants to appear. It doesn’t say whether he created seeds within the ground, or whether he just thought about different kinds of plants and they came up. It would be interesting to know how the earth “put forth” plants. This all happened on the third day.
II Peter 3:3-7 says,
First of all you must understand this, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own passions and saying, “Where is the promise of his coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things have continued as they were from the beginning of creation.” They deliberately ignore this fact, that by the word of God heavens existed long ago, and an earth formed out of water and by means of water, through which the world that then existed was deluged with water and perished.
But by the same word the heavens and earth that now exist have been stored up for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men.
The earth is almost ready for animal life, but one more thing needs to be done. So on the fourth day God puts the sun, moon, and stars in place. They are not only to give light and separate the day from the night, the light from the darkness, they are also for signs and for seasons, for days and years. This sounds as if the earth was standing in space all alone for three days before the rest of the solar system and the universe were created. It doesn’t seem likely. It doesn’t bother me that God could make light without the sun, moon and stars. In fact, there are many kinds of light, and it may be that this was when the kind of light that can be seen by our eyes was put in place. And the starlight which takes so long to get here must have been in place — perhaps without having to travel so long and so far? There are lots of interesting facts that we would like to know, but they were not questions that were asked back whenever God revealed the story of creation. So they are not answered for us.
Now that water and land are separated; there are plants to eat; and there is sunshine, animal life can be put on the earth. The next day is for water animals and birds. Fishes, sea monsters, and all kinds of water life are created. And it is the fifth day.
On the sixth day land animals are made. God said Let the earth bring forth… which is a strange way to put it. We can imagine the earth putting forth plants, but not animals. Then it goes on to say that God made the beasts of the earth, etc. So we don’t have to see them growing out of the ground!
— in his own image. And gave them dominion over everything He had already made, and gave him all the plants for food. It must be that none of them were poison then, all were nutritious.
And on the seventh day God rested, and blessed and hallowed it.
The above is a poetic telling of what God did, and it could only be known by God revealing it. But in the second chapter we have the story as Adam himself saw it and passed it on apparently. He was there. We get more particulars — he was made from the dust of the earth; God breathed into him the breath of life; he was put in a garden — with the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. He named the animals. And then God made him a wife because it wasn’t good for him to be alone.
— enter the villain. The serpent comes to Eve to tempt her. Eve didn’t know about lies; she had never heard a lie. So she didn’t know the serpent would lie to her. But when he accused God of misleading them, she should have recognized this was not true. We know she succumbs to the temptation, eats from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and gives some to her husband who also eats it. And their eyes are open and they know they are naked. Was this some kind of magic tree? No, their choice had shown them the difference between good and evil, and suddenly they realize. Example: youngster persuaded by older kids that to steal something from the store is not wrong; it’s all a game. So he does it. When he leaves the store with his stolen article, hiding it in his jacket pocket, he suddenly realizes that it is wrong; he is a thief. He has to hide what he has taken, and he wants to hide himself. When he was being persuaded, he believed the older kid. But now that he has done it, he realizes it was wrong. Just so, Adam and Eve have now gained the knowledge of good and evil — by doing evil. They could have discovered it by refusing evil also!
It’s interesting to wonder what would have happened to the rest of mankind if they had chosen to obey. Would each person have had to make the choice? Would we be saved or lost by that choice? Well, it’s no use to speculate. When Adam and Eve disobeyed God, they brought sin into the world, and death through that sin. Spiritual death passed on the human race that day, and they began to die physically. They were put out of the garden of Eden so they couldn’t eat from the tree of life and live forever. It was a sad day, but there was a good side to it. The fact that one man’s sin brought death to all, prepared the way so that one man’s righteousness could bring life to all. And that is what the 5th chapter of Romans tells us. We don’t each have to make decisions about obeying God that will bring death or salvation, so that we might be lost through our own action. Instead we can by faith accept God’s provision for our salvation, knowing that we need it — not through any fault of our own, but through the death that came with Adam’s sin. Of course, if we don’t choose Jesus and stay in spiritual death, we will be lost eternally.
The 15th verse of this chapter is considered to be the first prophecy of that salvation, of that savior. Jesus is the seed of woman who bruised the serpent’s head.
These three chapters are very important because they set the scene for all that is to follow from here to Revelation. Those who don’t accept them as literal really have no explanation for the whole drama of redemption.
Chapter 4
– out of the garden. Cain and Abel are born to Adam and Eve, and here we have the first murder. Cain kills Abel out of jealousy because God accepts Abel’s sacrifice and not Cain’s. There is one school of thought that says Cain’s sacrifice was not accepted because it was not an animal sacrifice and blood had to be shed for sin. Actually, we are not even told it was a sin sacrifice. It could have been an offering of first fruits. So I am inclined to think the problem was in Cain’s heart not in his hands.
In vss 17-24 we have a short genealogy of Cain’s descendants. It is interesting that even in the early generations there seemed to be a shortage of names because some of these names will be found in Seth’s descendants also.
Eve had another son, named Seth, whom she said was a replacement for Abel. But there is no doubt that there had been many other children in between. The Bible usually tells us about people for a reason. They have a place in a genealogy or some event that has a meaning beyond the event itself. So all the other children are skipped and Seth is picked out because it is through his line that men will continue on the earth and that eventually the savior will be born.
Chapter 5
gives us the genealogy from Adam down to Noah and his sons through the line of Seth. Many people think we have to allow for more time both before and after the flood than the genealogies allow for, so they have various ways of reconciling them with more time. However, for the time being, we are going to just look at them as they are given here. If we take the figures as given, we see that from the creation of Adam to the birth of Noah is 1056 years. And from Adam to the flood is 1656 years — Noah was 600 years old, as we shall see when the flood came. One interesting fact is that if we go by these figures, Methuselah died in the year of the flood. Did he die before it started to rain, or in the flood? He was Noah’s grandfather, so he surely would have tried to persuade him to come on the ark. Noah’s father died about five years before the flood. In spite of the exact years given, some people think there must be gaps in this genealogy. Ray is going to explain later one system that has been devised to put in more time.
deal with the flood — the reason for it, the preparation for it, the flood itself, and the aftermath. The first part of the chapter speaks of the wickedness of men; see vs. 5-8. Vss 11-13 speaks of the violence in the earth. But the first few verses have some interesting things hard to understand. The first and second verses speak of the daughters of men and the sons of God. There has been much speculation about who the sons of God are. Some think they are fallen angels (but they would hardly be called sons of God), or some other heavenly beings. Some think they are those of the godly line of Seth, but not godly ones according to this. I looked up this term one time and found several uses.
(1) In Job 1:6, 2:1, 38:7 they are heavenly beings who have access to the throne of God and who shouted for joy at the creation of the earth.
(2) Adam is called son of God in the Luke genealogy of Jesus in Lk 3:38 “the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.” Of course that may be referring to Jesus as the son of each of these and eventually the son of God.
(3) Jesus, of course, is called the Son of God.
(4) We are sons of God — Rom 8:14,19; II Cor. 6:18; Gal. 4:6. The note in my Bible says “It may be then that the explanation of the original meaning of 6:1-4 has been lost to us.”
Noah is given instructions as to the dimensions of the ark, probably more detailed that recorded here. But we can see from this description that it was a pretty big boat. A cubit is approximately 18 inches, so 300 cu long is 450 ft long. It was 75 feet wide and 45 feet high. Probably built more or less like a box since it only had to float on the water and not leak or turn over.
When the ark is finished and the animals and people in — Noah and wife, three sons and wives — God shuts the door and the rain starts. And it wasn’t just that it rained for forty days and nights. The fountains of the great deep burst forth — whatever that means. There must have been water within the earth that came bursting out, no doubt with earth upheavals, earthquakes, etc. After 40 days the rain stopped, but now it had to dry off. So Noah and family were in the ark more than a year. When the land was dry they left the ark; Noah built an altar and offered sacrifices. And God made a promise that he would never again destroy every living creature or send a flood to destroy the earth. And the rainbow was the sign of this covenant.
Incident of Noah’s drunkenness and curse on Canaan. Why on Canaan and not Ham?
Possibly Canaan was his only son at the time and the curse would be on Ham thru the line of Canaan. The Canaanites were eventually conquered by the descendants of Shem at the time of Joshua and those not killed became servants.
Chapter 10
is a genealogy of the sons of Noah that is a list of nations that came from them. The tower of Babel story in ch. 11 happened before they went in all these directions. At some time after the flood when all men had one language and lived in one area (although some may have gone off to other places), they decided to build a city with a tower with its top in heaven. God confused their language so they didn’t all speak the same, so they would move out to the rest of the world. It is possible that at this time he also caused some genetic differences that would explain the different races we see in the world now. Peleg
After this we are concerned only with the descendants of Shem, and the genealogy in the rest of Chapter 11 takes us to Abraham. And now the scene is set for the rest of the book of Genesis and for the rest of the story of the children of Israel. They are not called children of Abraham usually because Abraham had two sons, Isaac and Ishmael. The promises went through Isaac. Isaac had two sons, Jacob and Esau. The promises went through Jacob, who was also called Israel. Jacob had 12 sons, and they became the ancestors of the 12 tribes of Israel.