genesis… a simple introduction

I am writing a short (very short) introduction to each book of the Bible for a Church Bible exhibition.  Each summary should be accessible to the average 13-year-old (though it is intended for adults).  I aim to have an opening paragraph that is comprehensive if terse and then a further paragraph or two (if necessary) unpacking the first.  Here is my first unedited stab at an intro to Genesis.  I feel it is a little longer than I would like.  Any helpful criticism on content, style etc would be appreciated.

Genesis

Genesis is the first book of the Bible.  Unsurprisingly, it means ‘beginning’ or ‘origin’.  It tells us about the origin of the world, of humanity, of evil and suffering in history, and it tells us too about God’s promise to resolve the problem of evil and how he begins to do so in human history. 

In Genesis we discover that God made and arranged all that exists.  He is Creator-King of the universe.  Humanity is God’s greatest creation made to resemble and represent God in creation.  Tragically humanity chose to rebel against the Creator – choosing self-rule rather than God’s rule.  Much of Genesis is an account of the developing evil in humanity as the inevitable outcome of this choice and showing how human evil led to God’s judgements on humanity in various ways.

However, woven through the dark narrative of the progress of evil and its consequences we have another narrative.  It is a narrative of hope.  God is not only judging evil he is putting in place a plan to save humanity and creation.  The very humanity that has brought death and destruction will be used by God to bring life and blessing.  How is not fully revealed in Genesis but the building blocks are put in place.  In particular, God chooses to work through one man and his descendents to bring blessing to the world.  The man is called Abraham and his descendents are the nation we call Israel.  God’s promise to Abraham is expressed in these words,

The LORD had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.

 ² “I will make you into a great nation,
   and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
   and you will be a blessing.
³ I will bless those who bless you,
   and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
   will be blessed through you. (Gen 12:1-3)

We meet Abraham and some of his immediate descendents in Genesis but it will be many centuries, many generations and many Bible books later before we discover how God fulfils this promise in the person called Jesus.

a real adam and eve

Evangelicals are now being pressed by other evangelicals not only to jettison the literal historicity of the creation narrative but also the historicity of Adam and Eve.  The first is just conceivable but the second seriously strains any integrity in biblical interpretation and seriously compromises the biblical salvation narrative.  A few blogs consider some of these issues (here, here, here , here, here, here, here, and here) both biblically and scientifically and are well worth a read.

love wins, but which love?

God is love.  Love is ‘of God’.  Love is without doubt a quality of the life we have in God.  If we have not love we have nothing.  Out of the triad of graces, faith hope and love, the greatest is love.  Yet we must not make the mistake of thinking every act of love is necessarily good.  Indeed it appears to have been an act of love that resulted in the first sin.  Eve ate of the forbidden fruit because she was deceived by the serpent.  Adam was not deceived.  He ate because Eve gave him the fruit.  He ate to please his wife.

1Tim 2:11-14 (ESV)
Let a woman learn quietly with all submissiveness. I do not permit a woman to teach or to exercise authority over a man; rather, she is to remain quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.

United to his wife Adam followed her, not deceived by the serpent but through the weakness of his affection, into sin and death.

Adam and Eve of course are but a type of the true Adam and Eve.  Their union is a physical picture of the real marriage of God’s purpose, the spiritual union of Christ and his church (Eph 5).  But, as so often is the case, the type is cast not simply in comparison but in contrast.  For if Adam’s weak and indulgent love led to sin and death, then Christ’s strong and true love will lead to justification and life.  If Adam follows his deceived and guilty bride into sin and death, then Christ will do the same but he will follow not in weakness and disobedience but in self-giving love that he may take upon himself her sins and condemnation.  His is not love acting in moral weakness but love acting in moral strength.

Adam ‘love’ is rampant today.  It is the ‘love’ that permits.  The love that indulges and cannot forbid.  It yields to what God has refused.   It will not take a stand for fear of appearing hard and strict.  Thus every kind of forbidden fruit agenda is given a green light and the result is death.  Tragically this ‘love’ wins in the church as well as the world.  It is the love that concedes all the human heart wants.  It concedes feminist agendas and every disobedience that the heart may covet.   It is the love that refuses to say ‘no’.

We are called to Christ-love.  The love that calls sin what it is.  The love that sees God’s people with all their faults and sins yet loves them nonetheless.  It is a love that will move heaven and earth in the interests of sanctifying the church.  It will not serve by excusing or condoning or yielding to sin one iota but will seek to promote purity of life and doctrine.  Out of love for the church it will strenuously oppose sin and promote godliness and Christlikeness.  It will not water down God’s hard words.  However much desired and courted it will not accede to the lie of the serpent,  ‘You will not surely die’,  instead it will nourish and protect by speaking the truth in love.  It will rejoice too in proclaiming the gospel of forgiveness and life.  Undoubtedly it will be seen as tough love and by many as not loving at all yet undaunted it will pour out its life in the interests of others.  It will not stand outside and above in haughty criticism but will identify itself with those it loves in all their need and work self-sacrificially and tirelessly that they may blossom in the moral beauty of holiness.  And this love, and only this love, wins in the end.

The question we each must ask is  which ‘love’ is ours; is it Adam-love or Christ-love?

where are you adam?

When God asked Adam in the garden where he was, it was not because he, God, did not know, but because Adam did not know?  It is the first question in the Torah, the shortest question in the Torah (in Hebrew apparently only one word),  and probably the most penetrating question in the Torah.  Adam answered with an evasion, and a pitiful evasion at that (I was naked… ).  God brushes it away like a gossamer thread.  But it is more than an Adam question.  It is an everyman question.  It is the existential question God asks each of us.

The question is, will our answer be honest – I’m lost – or as pathetically evasive as Adam’s?

what happens when eve tells adam what to do and adam lets her…

The whole of Scripture demands careful reading.  Nothing is insignificant.  This is nowhere more true than in the opening chapters of Genesis.  These chapters are laden with symbolism.  The narrative of Gen 1-3 is pregnant with the big issues of human history.   In a couple of previous blogs (here, here and here) we reflected a little on the text of Scripture which gives the account of ‘the rebellion’ or ‘the fall’.

Gen 3:1-6 (ESV)
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” ​​​ And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.

I thought today I should reflect a little on one of the human failings that facilitates the fall, a creational irregularity that contributes to the rebellion.   In Gen 2 we are told that Adam is created first and then Eve.  This is significant.  Priority in creation conferred leadership (1 Tim 2:13).  Moreover, in the Genesis account, Adam was the source of Eve; she came from his body (Gen 2:21).  This too is significant.  The narrative point is that source and origin confer rights; the woman,  coming as she does from the man is intended to reflect the worth of the man in her submission to him (1 Cor 11:8).   Furthermore, we are expressly told the woman was made as a help for the man and not (at least in the most formal sense) vice versa (Gen 2:18).  A point again plainly stated in the NT (1 Cor 11:9).  We could add further indications of male leadership.  For example, Adam names Eve.  To name in the ancient world was an indication of authority (a bit like the implied authority of parents in naming their children still is today).

This male leadership is sometimes called patriarchy or more often today it is known as complementarianism.  It is called complementarianism as a way of recognising that males and females created by God are different and have different callings in life, callings which were never intended to be in conflict but to be complementary.  Now it is not my intention to try to tease out these different callings or roles.  I want simply to observe as the previous paragraph has made plain that fundamental to this distinction is the calling of men to lead.

Of course, even as I wrote the previous sentence, I realised how utterly reprehensible it is to the modern ear.  It is considered impossibly oppressive.  It is thoroughly retrograde and unpardonably recidivist.  Patriarchy may have been the basis of every civilization in all of previous history but we are enlightened, we know better.  Any half-human, half-moral, half-intelligent person knows that the only right position is full egalitarianism.  That is, male and female are not only equal in value and importance (which no complementarian denies) but any suggestion of gender meaning role differences is toxic and grotesque.   The patriarchy or complementarianism of Genesis 1-3 does not stand a prayer in our modern world.  It has as much credibility as claims that the world is flat.  I know this.

Yet, while the Bible does not claim that the earth is flat, it does teach again and again, in both old and new Testaments that God has conferred leadership on the male.  In fact, implicit in the narrative we are considering is that the misappropriation of roles by both Adam and Eve contributed to ‘the rebellion’.  The narrator is careful to inform us that the serpent spoke to Eve.  It is Eve that is beguiled and deceived.  Then Eve urges Adam to eat the forbidden fruit and Adam follows her bidding.  The point is clear, both acted outside their God-given callings.  Eve took the lead in a critical decision to disobey God and Adam in culpable weakness allowed her to do so.   Sin entered the world because neither maintained their God-given roles.

This, Paul forbids women to teach in the church for two reasons, one formal the other material.  The formal reason, that is, the essential reason, is that because of male priority in creation God has placed the responsibility of leadership and therefore  teaching in the church to the male (1 Tim 2:11-13) .  We may add to this a material reason, or if you like a reason evident from observation, namely, that given Eve was deceived by the serpent, and Adam was not it is clear that God knew what he was doing in placing leadership in the hands of the male; women seem more easily duped (1 Tim 2:14).  If you disagree with the latter comment then your beef is not with me, but Paul.  In fact, not to put too fine a point on it, your quarrel is with the Holy Spirit.

What is my main point in this post?  It is that reneging against biblical gender roles and the great rebellion go hand in hand in the biblical narrative.  The modern drive for a full-blown egalitarianism in society is simply an indicator of its defiance of God and his revealed pattern in creation.  This defiance by society is already having tragic consequences.  Neither men nor women feel sure of  their identity and responsibilities.  Their image is increasingly shaped by the media – the least responsible culture-conditioner imaginable.    Men are shoe-horned into caricatures of  either machismo-ism or homosexual effeminacy.  The new ‘metrosexual man’ is as concerned with his looks, dress and smell as his female counterpart, probably more so.  Meanwhile women discover their ‘freedom’ has pretty well turned them into the sex-objects of the worst kind of male fantasy; a new kind of sexualized woman: the hard-hitting Lucy Lui; the Terminator’s Sarah Connor; Sigourney Weaver’s ‘Ripley’;  Kate Beckinsdale’s  Underworld ‘Selene’; or Uma Thurman’s ‘The Bride’ in Kill Bill.  The list goes on.  The female who is more deadly than the male is part of C21 lore.

In the new egalitarian society boys don’t grow up to be men, they remain ‘boys’ with all their boyish evasion of responsibility.  All are charmingly irresponsible and befuddled Hugh Grant’s.   They marry later, if at all.  They father children but do not raise them.  Women wear the trousers and carry the responsibility.  They study, achieve, provide the income and keep the home (not so egalitarian in reality).  Men become touchy-feely while women are stoical and hard.   The role reversal works out at so many levels.    But the net result is marriage deeply suffers and society begins to disintegrate.  The net result is the rebellion deepens.

Of course, there are other factors that play into the troubles of society, but the setting aside  of a responsible complementarianism, as in Gen 3,  is undoubtedly one.

What a loss of complementarianism means for the church will be the subject of a future post.

the first lie… embellished

Gen 3:2-5 (ESV)
And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”

In the last blog we noted the received wisdom of practised liars; if you’re going to lie then lie big.  They must be right because the original liar whom Jesus calls,  ‘father of lies‘ and  John calls ‘that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world‘ clearly believed this maxim.  Not only is Eve told disobedience will not bring judgement she is promised it will bring joy; far from bringing death, the liar promises disobedience will bring life… you shall be like God, is anything more life-like than this?

Like all practised liars, the serpent spoke half-truths.  Adam and Eve did not die immediately (at least not physically, though they died in a more profound way).  And they did gain a god-like independent knowledge of good and evil as the liar promised but it far from enhanced their joy.  Like all who eat forbidden fruit, however, initially inviting in time they find its taste is bitter and ultimately deadly. What Adam and Eve discovered is that the only way they could have the knowledge of good and evil was by becoming evil.

Immediately self-consciousness replaces innocence and fear of God replaces a sense of acceptance.

Gen 3:7-10 (ESV)
Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.  And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.”

The first ‘knowledge of good and evil’ they have is not of ‘good’ but ‘evil’, their own evil.  Recrimination,  blame, and blame avoidance strategies kick into play and the treadmill of human conscience, ‘accusing or excusing’ has begun.  The whole sorry tissue of evasion ends in death, death for Adam, death for Eve, death for everyone, and so Jesus reminds us ‘Satan has been a murderer from the beginning’ (Jn 8:44); lies and liars destroy, they kill.

When we begin to dissect the anatomy of a lie in Genesis it should cause us as Christians to hate lies.  Paul says to the Colossians,

‘lie not one to another seeing that you have put off the old self  with its practices and have put on the new self’ (Col 3:9)

and to the Ephesians,

Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another (Eph 4:25)

For a Christian to lie is to deny his new standing in Christ and his part in the body of Christ.  It is to deny Christ, who is truth.  Our culture here in the UK in the last 25 years or so has become one where people easily and regularly lie without shame.  Not to lie if it will get you what you want and make life easier is a sign of mental weakness (notice the assumptions implied in modern lies are just the same as those in the first lie).  It is all too easy for Christians to adopt the manners of their culture.  The C1 culture of Crete had a penchant for lying but Paul reminds the believers there they must be different.  As believers we should remember the ancient wisdom: one of the seven things God hates, is ‘a lying tongue‘ (Prov 6:17).  Indeed, according to James, we lie when we behave in ways inconsistent with truth, we ‘lie against the truth‘  (Jas 3:14).

To lie is to be ‘of your father the devil’ (Jn 8:44).  It is to side with anti-Christ ( 2 Jn 7) and be willingly complicit in his lie.  We must take care for those wishing to believe the lie often find that God gives them what they wish for (2 Thess 2:11).

Which brings us to a second observation.  Bad, and bad enough, as everyday lying is for a believer, the greatest lie we can become inveigled in is that of false teaching.  Distortions of gospel truth are the greatest lies of all.

Thus Paul reminds us that the great apostasy of humanity was ‘to exchange  the truth of God for a lie’ (Roms 1:25).  When Jesus excoriates the Pharisees as liars, who have as their father the devil, who is the ‘father of lies’ it is because they contradict him and his teaching (Jn 8).    We need to consider carefully what we  teach or embrace, for God does.  When we casually accept or advocate teaching with little thought as to whether it is true to Scripture but simply because it is new, trendy, appealing and/or comfortable then we are embracing the lie (1 Jn 2:22).  And we are opposing Christ who is the truth and speaks the truth (Jn 8).

False teaching is the most damnable of damnable lies.

The ‘liar’ in John’s epistles is the one who does not live according to the gospel (1 Jn 2:4, 1 Jn 4:20) and the false teacher (1 Jn 2:21,22).

1John 2:18-25 (ESV)
Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. Therefore we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us. But you have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all have knowledge. I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth. Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also. Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you too will abide in the Son and in the Father. And this is the promise that he made to us-eternal life.

John identifies true believers as those who hold to truth.  And truth is the message they have heard ‘from the beginning’, that is, the apostolic teaching.  The ‘liar’ is the person who dismisses, distorts or despises that message.

As we evangelicals are busily writing off as merely cultural large swathes of what the Bible teaches we should be asking ourselves whether we are ‘of the truth’ or ‘embracing the lie’.

In Revelation we read of the redeemed who inherit the Kingdom.  They are the army of the Lamb.  Those who have stood beside him in the battle for truth.  They have foregone much that was pleasurable in life that they may be pure for him (like ancient soldiers in Israel who avoided marital relations on the eve of battle) and have resisted the lie wherever they found it, sometimes at great personal cost, that they may follow the Lamb wherever he goes.   John sees them in his vision.  He writes,

Rev 14:1-5 (ESV)
Then I looked, and behold, on Mount Zion stood the Lamb, and with him 144,000 who had his name and his Father’s name written on their foreheads. And I heard a voice from heaven like the roar of many waters and like the sound of loud thunder. The voice I heard was like the sound of harpists playing on their harps, and they were singing a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and before the elders. No one could learn that song except the 144,000 who had been redeemed from the earth. It is these who have not defiled themselves with women, for they are virgins. It is these who follow the Lamb wherever he goes. These have been redeemed from mankind as firstfruits for God and the Lamb, and in their mouth no lie was found, for they are blameless.

Later he sees another group.  It is those forever outside the Celestial City, assigned to the Eternal Burnings   Among the ghoulish crowd are ‘liars’.

Rev 21:8 (ESV)
But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”

the first lie…

Gen 3:2-4 (ESV)
And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die.

Interesting to note that the first lie was a denial of judgement.  It has been the primary and prevailing lie ever since.  Received wisdom says, if you are going to lie, then lie big; the bigger the lie, the greater its panache, the more likely it is to be swallowed.  Well this one was a whopper.  Perhaps that contributed to its success.

More importantly, it succeeded because it suited Eve to believe it; she liked the look of the forbidden fruit.  The most successful lies are those people want to believe.  Who does not wish to believe that there are no evil consequences of doing what one wants to do?  That there is no day of accountability, of reckoning, is a lie many still want to believe, and do (2 Pet 3).  But it doesn’t stop it from being a lie.

Believing it ain’t so, don’t make it so.

Gen 5:1-5 (ESV)
This is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them Man when they were created. When Adam had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, after his image, and named him Seth. The days of Adam after he fathered Seth were 800 years; and he had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days that Adam lived were 930 years, and he died.

is adam a real person?

Is Adam a real person?  Evolutionary pressures are causing otherwise orthodox theologians to give ground on this question.  Whatever the literary genre of Gen 1-3, we must ask the following:

If Adam and Eve are not historical then who gave birth to Cain and Abel (Gen 4:1)?  Are they mythological too?  If so what about their children… and so on.

Is the detailed account of Adam’s life span and lineage just so much bunkum (Gen 5:1-4)?

If Adam isn’t historical then who is the ‘Adam’ at the root of the genealogy of Jesus in Lk 2? Are we not intended to understand this genealogy as genuinely historical?

Romans 5 speaks of ‘one man’ called ‘Adam’ through whom sin and death entered the world.  It juxtaposes him with another ‘one man’, Jesus who brings justification and life.  Is Paul mistaken in treating Adam as historical?  Is Paul’s whole theological structure explaining human history and the human condition in terms of real people just a house of cards?

Is marriage after all just a social construct and nothing to do with God’s original design in creation as Jesus teaches in Matt 19?  Did Jesus misunderstand Gen 2,3?

There are other references to Adam in Scripture.  Check them out.  I can see none where the prima facie reading is not that of a historical person, the one Paul calls ‘the first man’ (1 Cor 15).