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Genesis 1-11 – Shalom Disrupted

In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Lucy and her siblings explore the old professor’s sprawling house, where they live during the war. In one room they discover an old wardrobe that catches Lucy’s attention. Although the others quickly move on, Lucy opens the wardrobe and climbs inside to feel the fur coats. Instead of softness, she encounters the rough bark of tree trunks, the sharp branches of trees, and the crunch of fallen snow. She finds herself in the mysterious world of Narnia. There she encounters a curious faun, part human and part goat, and they have tea together before she returns home.

Naturally, her siblings don’t believe her tales, which they find too outlandish. She leads them back to the wardrobe, but when they open the door, they find only coats, mothballs, and wood paneling—no magical world at all. But a few days later, the children, who are supposed to stay clear of visitors, are exploring the house when a tour group comes through. Lucy quickly climbs into the old wardrobe to hide, and Edmund follows her, meaning to tease her about “Narnia.” Edmund feels his way around the fur coats, looking for Lucy, but she seems to have disappeared. He has a sudden cold sensation. He calls for Lucy and notices a dim light and moves toward it, thinking it is the door. But it is not the light coming through the crack in the door. It is further up and further in, through a dark wood cloaked in winter. Edmund has entered Narnia.

C. S. Lewis imagined an ordinary wardrobe as an unpredictable portal into a magical world. However impossible this might seem, it bears striking similarities to the experience of reading Scripture. 

Eventually, Lucy and all her siblings make it to Narnia. Peter and Susan discover that her stories are true. But here’s what is most fascinating about this story: Lucy, Edmund, Peter, and Susan do not just visit Narnia as outsiders. They find themselves an integral part of the story. In fact, they are the fulfillment of old prophecies about “two sons of Adam and two daughters of Eve” (that is, humans) who will reign as kings and queens of Narnia when Aslan returns to conquer the White Witch once and for all.

As we will discover in this series, the Bible is a portal to another world, a world so vibrant that when we return to our own world we see it with new eyes. The fact that you do not always find this to be the case does not make it any less true. On its pages, you will find a story that is not simply about other people who lived long ago. As you read it, you’ll discover things that are deeply true about you—so true that without them you cannot fully be yourself.

(Adapted from: Carmen Joy Imes, Being God’s Image: Why Creation Still Matters (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic: An Imprint of InterVarsity Press, 2023), 1–3.

We will be spending the next 4 months going through the first five books of the Bible, called the Pentateuch. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. 

If you have ever read or even flipped through this part of the Bible, you will know that there are some pretty interesting stories in there. Creation, the Flood, Joseph and his fancy coat, the plagues, the Red Sea, the wandering through the wilderness.

But, there are also some pretty uninteresting parts, such as genealogies and lists and laws. So, why are we going through the Pentateuch? I have 5 reasons.

It is part of the Bible – One of our core values as a church is Biblical teaching, referencing 2 Timothy 3:16-17: “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” 

All Scripture includes the Old Testament. In fact, when Paul wrote this to Timothy, he was referring specifically to the Jewish Scriptures.

It is part of our identity – the Christian movement was born out the culture and beliefs of the Jewish faith and traditions. We will be more confident in who we are as God’s people when we understand the family into which we have been adopted.

It is full of wisdom – as we will discover throughout the series, the Pentateuch, also referred to as the Torah, or the Law, is not so much about legal instruction as it is about wisdom for living as God’s people. We are not governed legalistically by the Torah, but we will be more wise if we are familiar with it.

It tells us about the character of God – this is really what the Pentateuch is all about. In many ways, the instructions that God gave to the Israelites are similar to other Ancient civilizations. But, they are different because Yahweh is different. 

As we become familiar with the Pentateuch, we become familiar with God and how he is different than the ways of the world.

Finally, we are going through the Pentateuch because it helps us know Jesus better. You may have heard the saying that the Old Testament points to Jesus. This is true, but there is another way to think about this truth.

The New Testament was formed with the Old Testament as its foundation. The early followers of Jesus had confidence in him as the Messiah because when they scrutinized his life and teaching against the Old Testament, they found him to be authentic.

The early church saw Jesus through the eyes of the Old Testament. That is how they understood him. It is how they became confident that he is the Messiah and the Son of God.

My goal is to discover and describe the connections between the Pentateuch and the church so that we may know Jesus Christ more fully.

I came to this study with the question, how can the Pentateuch bring transformation to us as a 21st-century Canadian church? What we will see throughout the series is that the greater story of God’s people, as recorded in the Pentateuch, will bring maturity and clarity to how we live out our vision, mission, and values as a church.

If we want to know Jesus well and we want to have a solid identity and purpose, we need to know the Old Testament well. So, we will start with the Pentateuch.

Pentateuch Overview

I will only provide a very brief overview today. If you want to dig more into the Pentateuch as a whole, you can find a more in-depth introduction to this series in a video that I recorded along with notes and resources on our website under sermons.

The Pentateuch contains a unified narrative, telling the story of God’s creation of all things, how his good purposes were disrupted, and his plan to make things right.

A primary theme through the Pentateuch is covenant. God made covenants with Noah, with Abraham and his descendants, and with the nation of Israel. 

The main characters in the Pentateuch are God, the family of Abraham and his descendants, who became the nation of Israel, made up of twelve tribes, and Moses, who was God’s representative.

The stories’ locations span from modern-day central Iraq in the east, where Abraham was born, to modern-day northern Egypt in the west. 

Not including Genesis 1-11, the Pentateuch’s timeframe spans about 760 years, from Abraham’s birth in 2166 BC to Moses’ death 1406 BC.

The dates of Genesis 1-11 are not clear. This is partly due to inconsistencies in dates among ancient manuscripts, but also because the timespan of creation is impossible to know for sure unless you interpret Genesis 1 as being literal days. I’ll get to that in a bit.

Let’s look at Genesis 1-11 in two parts and then I’ll close with a connection to the New Testament.

Genesis 1-2

These chapters contain two accounts of creation. The first account in 1:1-2:3 uses the literary device of a 7-day week to tell how God brought order out of chaos and that the sabbath is built into creation. 

The second account of creation in chapter 2 focuses on humanity as having a special relationship with God out of all creatures and is given the task of caring for creation.

When we read the creation accounts, we might compare them with scientific accounts of creation. Most notably, the theory of evolution claims that creation came from a cosmic collision.

When the stories in Genesis were being passed down through the generations, the Israelites would have had a similar experience. The alternative Ancient Near East accounts of creation would not have been scientific but rather quite mythical.

I am not an expert on these, but I want to give you some examples.

The Babylonian version refers to two deities who represent the fresh and salt waters. Their waters mingle and produce a new generation of gods. After a bunch of conflicts between these gods, the god Marduk came out on top and created the known universe.

The Canaanite version of creation is similar and involves a conflict between the gods Baal and Yam, in which Baal was the victor.

For the Egyptians, the basic origin of creation is found in prehistoric waters called Nun. The creator god Atum emerged from the waters as an act of self-creation and from him evolved other gods and goddesses.

For the Israelites, it was Yahweh who created everything, not out of conflict or some sort of engagement between different gods, but out of abundant generosity of a single God who spoke everything into being.

I mentioned earlier the challenge of know the timespan of Genesis 1-11. More challenging is the timespan between creation and the first humans. A common question is, should we interpret Genesis 1 as literal days or not?

My answer is that the text is theological, not scientific. The point of these chapters is to say that God made creation, not how he did it. 

It’s easy with our modern minds to draw scientific conclusions from the information in these chapters. But, we need to be careful not to bring our modern assumptions into the text.

Imagine you stumble upon a whole bunch of gold in the mountains. You spend your life savings to lease the land, acquire permits, and the equipment to mine it, only to discover later that it is not gold, but pyrite, or fool’s gold. You are forced to sell everything and go bankrupt. 

Years later, you discover that the person who bought the lease and equipment from you has made a fortune from mining gold on that property. How is this possible?

You see, real gold is often found among pyrite. But, if you think pyrite is real gold, you will miss out on the real stuff which is also there, but you’ve missed it.

When we examine the Bible in search of scientific proof of God, we will usually come up with fool’s gold and we will miss the real stuff which is knowing who God is and who we are. 

I strongly encourage you to base your trust in the Bible not on whether it is supported by modern science but on the truth about who God is and who we are in our relationship with God. 

We may find some pretty cool connections between God and science as we explore the Bible. But, let’s not base our faith on those connections, lest we go bankrupt.

This brings us to the final point of my overview of Genesis 1-2.

A common feature of ancient creation accounts includes the establishment of an image that represents or contains the essence of the god. For some, it is the human king of their nation. For others, it may be a stone or other sort of idol or icon.

For Yahweh, this image is none other than humanity itself. We are meant to embody the qualities, essence, and presence of God, and to do his work, representing him as caretakers of creation.

The Genesis account of creation is unique because it gives dignity to humanity. Other religions at the time had gods who were indifferent to humanity, Yahweh created humans to be his image-bearers.

In the book I read from earlier, Carmen Joy Imes writes this:

Our identity as God’s image implies a representational role—the Creator God appointed humans to exercise his rule over creation on his behalf. Because of human rebellion, most of us are not doing this job well; nonetheless, it remains our job. God’s answer to the brokenness resulting from human rebellion was to select a single family, the family of Abraham, to mediate his blessing to all nations. Abraham’s descendants, the people of Israel, become the people who bear God’s name, representing him in the world in order to restore the rest of humanity to our Creator.

Carmen Joy Imes, Being God’s Image: Why Creation Still Matters (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic: An Imprint of InterVarsity Press, 2023), 3.

This is the story we are entering into. Next week we will be introduced to Abraham. For now, let’s look at Genesis chapters 3-11, which is all about distorted desire.

Genesis 3-11

We have a term for what happens in chapter 3. We call it “the fall.” This is because humanity fell from God’s glory as his image-bearers. In the story of Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit, we see what sin is and it answers the question of why we die.

Sin is rebellion against God. It is a lack of trust in him. The serpent said to Eve, “Did God really say, ‘you must not eat from any tree of the garden’?” Sin is substituting our own judgment for God’s judgment. 

What follows is a disordering of desires. In other words, we still want the good things that God offers to us. But, we pursue them in the wrong way.

Augustine refers to this as using what we are to love instead of loving that which we are to use. 

We confuse relationship with commodity utilization. The cultivation of creation is meant to be relational, a caring act of love for the God who gave abundantly. 

But, we commodify our resources, including other humans. Everything becomes a commodity, which in turn requires a life of possession, control, and mastery.

We can see this in the stories that follow. Cain kills his brother Abel over jealousy. Cain’s descendant, Lamech is the first to have multiple wives, and laments because he killed a man. 

In Genesis 6. “The sons of God saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married any of them they chose.

Without knowing who these sons of God are, or any other detail about this story, we are left with only the understanding that they took whatever and whomever they wanted.

Verse 5 and 11 says, “The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become… every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time… the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and was full of violence.”

This brought on the flood, which destroyed every living thing except that which was saved on the ark that Noah built. 

Following the flood, more violence and commodification is seen in the construction of the tower of Babel. We read in Genesis 11 that people came together and figured out how to make bricks. “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves.”

To this day, we humans have an insatiable desire for the same sort of things. Control, security, fame, comfort. Particularly in affluent societies, we ignore the fact that much of what we gain comes at a great cost to someone else. This is the result of disordered desires. 

Psalm 73 speaks to this:

“Surely God is good to Israel, to those who are pure in heart. But as for me, my feet had almost slipped; I had nearly lost my foothold. For I envied the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked. They have no struggles; their bodies are healthy and strong. They are free from common human burdens; they are not plagued by human ills. Therefore pride is their necklace; they clothe themselves with violence. From their callous hearts comes iniquity; their evil imaginations have no limits…

Yet I am always with you; you hold me by my right hand. You guide me with your counsel, and afterward you will take me into glory. Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you. My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever.” (1-7; 23-26)

We arrive in our story at a man named Abram, who is a descendant of Noah’s son, Shem, and his wife, Sarai. They lived in a place called Ur when God called them to leave their home and go to the land he would show them.

This is where we will leave the story in Genesis. Next week, we will pick up with the story of Abram and Sarai and see how the covenant God made with Abram foreshadows the Gospel.

I want to close by reading from the Gospel of John and the letter to the Colossians as a way to connect Jesus to Genesis.

John 1:1-5

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

Col. 1:15-16

The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.

The early Christians saw Jesus as the full embodiment of the wisdom of God. He was also God’s perfect image, the perfect human. Knowing Jesus means we can know God in all his goodness, and we can know ourselves; who we are meant to be.

Pentateuch Series Bibliography

Alexander, T. Desmond. From Paradise to the Promised Land: An Introduction to the Pentateuch. Fourth Edition. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2022.

Alter, Robert. The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary. New York: W.W. Norton, 2004.

Averbeck, Richard E. The Old Testament Law for the Life of the Church: Reading the Torah in the Light of Christ. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic: An Imprint of InterVarsity Press, 2022.

Brueggemann, Walter. Preaching from the Old Testament. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2019.

Glanville, Mark. Freed to Be God’s Family: The Book of Exodus. Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2021.

Longman III, Tremper. Genesis. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016.

Lynch, Matthew J. Flood and Fury: Old Testament Violence and the Shalom of God. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2023.

Provan, Iain, V. Philips Long, and Tremper Longman III. A Biblical History of Israel. Second Edition. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2015.

Smith, James E. The Torah. 2nd ed. Old Testament Survey Series. Joplin, MO: College Press Pub. Co., 1993.

Walton, John H and J. Harvey Walton. The Lost World of the Torah: Law as Covenant and Wisdom in Ancient Context. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2019.