David Pawson - Genesis [1] The Basic Book - Unlocking the bible

well now the Bible is not one book but many the word Bible comes from the plural word biblia which means library and the Bible is not one book but sixty-six books and together these books form a history book the history of our universe but the Bible begins earlier and it ends later than any other history book because it begins with the very beginning of our universe it goes right through to the end of our universe and even beyond but its history written from God's point of view therefore he selects what is important for him that makes it quite different from a political history or a physical history of our universe or a cultural history of our society God selects very carefully the things that matter to him the events which affected him most deeply therefore again it's quite different from every other history now there are two themes in the Bible number one what has gone wrong with our world and number two how can it be put right I think everybody agrees our world is not a good place to live in something has gone terribly wrong with it and the book of Genesis tells us exactly what but the rest of the Bible tells us how it's going to be put right or rather how God Himself will put it right only God could solve a problem the size of our world and he's going to do it by rescuing the human race from itself so that's what we need to be rescued from ourselves that's what the word redemption actually means to be rescued and we need to be rescued from ourselves so all 66 books form part of one great drum which I'm going to call the drama of redemption and the book of Genesis introduces us to the stage the cast and the plot of this great drama and without the first few chapters of Genesis the rest of the Bible really not making his sense the Hebrew title for this book is simply in the beginning that's because the Hebrew Scriptures were in the form of Scrolls all rolled up and they would simply give each scroll the name of the first word or phrase in it so that just unwrapping the first bit of the scroll they could identify which book of their scriptures it was so they simply call it in the beginning when the Hebrew Old Testament was translated into Greek about two hundred and fifty years before Jesus was born they changed the name to Genesis which means origin or beginning and that's a very appropriate title because here we have the origin of our universe of the Sun and the moon and the stars of planet Earth on which we live here we have the origin of plants birds fish animals humans here we have the origin of sex of marriage and a family life we have the origin of civilization of government of culture both Arts and Sciences we have here the origin of sin and death and murder and war we even have here in this book the origin of sacrifice both animal and human so it's a remarkable book just one small book fifty chapters and yet it covers the origin of all that and it deals with ultimate questions like where did our universe come from why are we here and even more personal why does each of us have to die something we rebel against something we don't talk about or think about something we dress up like a horticultural show to try and disguise the horror of it but we all have to die why now these are ultimate questions of life and we need answers to them or else we just drown these questions in busyness and get them but they can't be answered by any human being the historians can't answer these questions they can't tell us how how it all began because no historian was there either to observe or record how it happened scientists can't tell us about the beginning of our universe they can go back to the beginning but they can't go beyond that they can't observe anything beyond that so they can't tell us how it began and therefore much more they cannot tell us why it began science cannot find a purpose for this universe coming into being they can tell us some details of how it came about but certainly not why philosophers can't answer these ultimate questions they can only guess it is speculation when philosophers try and tell us for example the answer to the question that occupies most of them the problem of evil where did evil come from why is there so much evil in the world philosophers have strained their brains to try and give us an answer but it's all guesswork nobody really knows there is only one person who could really answer these questions for us and that's God himself so when you open the book of Genesis you are immediately faced with a question are you reading the results of human imagination or divine inspiration does the book of Genesis just give us another series of guesses from human speculation about these things or does it actually tell us the answer give us the answer from the only person who was there when it all began and indeed the person responsible for it there are other accounts of creation in the world there's one widely known one called the Babylonian epic it's far more complicated and far less credible than what you have in Genesis but it's only one of other sagas which are supposed to tell us how it all began you should read some of them just to compare them with the sheer simplicity and convincing nature of Genesis 1 but you must decide when you read Genesis are you reading the product of a human imagination or a divine inspiration so you've got to take a step of faith before you open the book but actually science is based on steps of faith I've got a science degree and I know that in science you you produce a hypothesis a working theory and then you test it to see if it fits the facts that's how science progresses it's built on such leaps of faith so you leap in faith into a theory and then you test it with the facts and therefore I believe that the approach of faith is scientific from that point of view and I say take a step of faith in Genesis assume it is God's answer to these questions and then see if it fits the facts and there are two big facts that stare me in the face which are perfectly explained by the answer in Genesis fact number one what a wonderful world we live in isn't it incredible the universe is amazing but this planet is the most interesting thing in the universe it's got more variety in it it's got more well it's got life in it we live in a wonderful world and the more you watch nature programs on television the more wonderful it appears to be and the wonders of modern photography are revealing so much to us do you like watching those programs what a wonderful world we're in and the other fact is this it's been ruined by those who live in it now these are two facts we all have to live with and we're becoming more more conscious of the environment and what we're doing to it 100 different species are becoming extinct every day we're destroying the world we live in now these two facts are extraordinary what a wonderful world we live in and why are we destroying it well I believe that the facts fit Genesis perfectly and I believe it's a scientific approach now let's look at the place of Genesis in the Bible it's not just the first book in the Bible it's the foundational book for the whole Bible most if not all biblical truths are here in the book of Genesis in essence it's why it's been called the seed plot of the Bible the seeds of Genesis come to fruition later in the Bible but they're all there in embryo this book is in fact the key that unlocks the rest of the Bible have you ever wondered what the Bible would be like 50 gaen with gen Exodus instead of Genesis supposing this book was missing I think as soon as you began to read the Bible without it you'd say well I'm not interested in the bunch of Jewish slaves in Egypt why should I study their history and religion only if you had a particular academic interest in it would you read any further but because Genesis is there you're reading about yourself about your life you understand what makes you tick and why you can't be a better person and the person you wish to be in your best moment so you ever wondered why life is such a moral struggle most people want to be better than they are but fail why well Exodus wouldn't help you to understand that Genesis does because you're reading about your ancestor a man called Adam and when you read about him it's like looking in a mirror and seeing yourself the Old Testament is built on the book of Genesis there are many references all the way through the Old Testament to people like Adam and Noah and Abraham and Jacob who changed his name to Israel the whole of the Old Testament builds on the book of Genesis but it's the New Testament that builds on it even more surprisingly Genesis is more quoted in the new than in the Old Testament would you believe it all the first six chapters 1 2 3 4 5 6 are all quoted in detail in the New Testament all the major writers of the New Testament eight of them all refer to the book of Genesis and Jesus himself did of course for Christians Jesus attitude to Genesis settles all questions because if we follow Jesus then we trust him we believe he spoke the truth and it's interesting that Jesus regarded all the characters of Genesis as real historical figures not legends he regarded Noah and the flood as an historical event and if Jesus did than I do whatever other difficulties there may be and we'll look at them as we go along nevertheless if Noah was real for Jesus then he's real for me not only that but Jesus claimed to be on personal acquaintance terms with Abraham and he said before Abraham was born I am and he was led to meet me and the Jews listened to Jesus saying this and said you're not fifty years old and you claim to know Abraham but Jesus saying I was there I was there do you trust Jesus then that's the truth so Jesus was constantly endorsing the book of Genesis when he was asked about divorce and remarriage what did he do he took them right back to Genesis chapter two and said you'll find the answer right there so you can see that the book of Genesis really underlies the whole Bible provides the key to the rest without it the rest would not make sense to give you just one exam you will not understand the cross without the book of Genesis would you believe it because Paul says this is what happened at the cross just as one man's disobedience brought death to the human race one man's obedience brings life now that's the heart of the cross but it's talking about Genesis chapter three so I think I've established my case therefore if you don't believe the book of Genesis you can't rely on the rest of the Bible if Genesis is proved mistaken then the rest of the Bible is shaken if Genesis is not true then chance is our creator and the brute beasts are our ancestors if Genesis is not true and therefore it is not surprising that this book has been more under attack than any other book in the entire Bible there are two prongs to the attack one is scientific and we're all aware of some of the problems there I'm not going to have time to deal with them all in full but we'll refer to them and there are other tapes that have been made and videos that deal with them more fully but we have to be aware of them especially young people are aware of what they've been told in school and biology classes and they come with that background to read Genesis and they have real problems and we must be honest about them for example science has questioned the order of creation the speed of creation and the method of creation science has questioned the age of the earth the origin of men the extent of the flood the age of people who lived before the flood and many other things but behind in that attack I believe there is a satanic attack the devil hates two books in the Bible Genesis and revelation and he hates the first chapters of Genesis and the last chapters of Revelation particularly because the one describes his entrance into our world and the other describes his undignified exit from our world and so he likes to keep people out of the early chapters of Genesis and the later chapters of Revelation he wants to persuade you that Genesis is myth and revelation is mystery so that you leave them alone because he knows perfectly well that if you can destroy people's faith in Genesis then you have in fact destroyed the foundation of the whole Bible so it is not surprising that there's been such a lot of argument about Genesis if you distrust this book you tend to discard the rest now how did Genesis come to be written it's one of five books which form a unit not so much in our Bible but in Jewish Scripture most certainly these five books form together the Pentateuch Penta means five there's a big five-sided building in Washington DC called the Pentagon well it's the same word Pentateuch the five books and they are often called by Jews the Torah which means instruction and they believe that these five books together form the makers instructions and it's very wise since the maker gave us these instructions to get the most out of life to become familiar with them so the Jews read through the first five books of the Bible every year on election every week they read a bit more so they get rounded in a year like painting the fourth bridge when they get to the other end of it they start again at the beginning and it is their weekly lectionary now Jews Christians and even pagan historians believe that Moses wrote these five books and that's been the long tradition I see no reason to doubt it by the time of Moses the alphabet had replaced the picture language that prevailed in Egypt and still in China and Japan today but that had been replaced by an alphabet and remember that Moses was university-educated if ever you see Cleopatra's Needle on the Thames embankment that's one of two columns the other is in Rome which stood at the entrance to the Egyptian University and may well be two columns which Moses looked at every morning he went as a student so he had the education and the knowledge to compile these five books and I believe that that tradition is right though none of the books has a name in them there are however two problems if Moses wrote these five books the first problem is quite minor and that is that at the end of Deuteronomy Moses death is carefully recorded and I assume you would agree with me that that's a little unlikely that he wrote that Joshua probably added a note to that effect at the end of the five books to round off the story but the major problem is this the book of Genesis ends 300 years before Moses was born now he lived during the days covered by Exodus Leviticus numbers and Deuteronomy those four clearly come from his lifetime there's no problem with Moses writing those but Genesis ends three to 400 years before Moses was born so how could he have got his material for the book of Genesis one of the things we know about early society is that people who don't write have phenomenal memories to this day tribes that have no writing can tell you the history of the tribe they pass it on around the campfire at night from father to son and this oral tradition as we call it is very strong in primitive communities and would be among the Hebrews especially when they became slaves in Egypt they would want their children to know who they were where they'd come from now there are two things that are normally passed down in this memory form one is genealogists family trees to give people our identity and sure enough Genesis is full of genealogies full of family trees and there is one phrase that comes ten times in the book of Genesis and it is these are the generations of scattered through the book if you've read it you must have noticed that phrase these are the generations of that is exactly the kind of thing that would be passed on from memory to memory the other thing that gets passed on a sagas I mean heroes stories of great things that your ancestors have done and so tribal memory is composed of these two things generation or genealogies and sagas the things our ancestors did that we're exciting and these are told over the campfire now most of Genesis is composed of these two things stories about great heroes interspersed with family trees so it is obviously a collection a compilation of memories that Moses picked up from the slaves in Egypt and put together and I'm sure you can see how clearly that was done except for one passage there is one part of Genesis he couldn't possibly have picked up that way the first chapter or rather since the chapter divisions as so often in the Bible God never inspired them are in quite the wrong place chapter 1 verse 1 through 2 chapter 2 verse 3 is a section that Moses couldn't possibly have got from any human being that section he must have got from God himself it is one of those parts of the Bible that must have been directly dictated by God and taken down by men most of the Bible did not come that way we mustn't think of the writers of the Bible as word processors as typewriters on which God typed out his word because God inspired the writers to use their own temperament and memory and insight and outlook to shape his word but so overruled by the inspiration of his Spirit that what resulted was what he wanted written so that other parts of the Bible have the stamp of the writer on them the rest of Genesis has the same stamp on it as Exodus Leviticus numbers and Deuteronomy you can detect Moses style and hand in it but Genesis 1 1 2 2 3 is totally different and has all the marks of God's speech we shall see in a moment that it's mathematically perfect when God speaks his speech is perfect mathematics see the Hebrew language doesn't have figures they just had letters and each letter stood for a figure so Allah for a was 1 and B was 2 and C was 3 and so on that's a common way of counting and when you turn the letters of Genesis 1 into figures it is astonishing I've been in Jerusalem talking to rabbis who have actually worked out all the mathematics of every verse and they spend days discussing it because it's mathematically perfect the very first sentence in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth is a sentence of 7 word that's just one of the figures we'll be looking at this later but in many ways Genesis 1 is a unique piece of literature quite unique and has all the hallmarks of having come directly from God so I can imagine Moses collecting all the memories of the people the genealogies and the sagas putting them together and then God saying now I'm going to write the introduction so take this down interesting that at the other end of the Bible the same thing happens book of Revelation was not composed by John he was simply shown visions and given words and told me I'll write this down write this down write this down and of course at both ends of the Bible you've got things that men couldn't possibly think up because they're both beyond the reach of his imagination so God had to dictate as it were the beginning and the end of his word some 103 says God made known his ways to Moses by believing in handling Genesis 1 I almost feel like taking my shoes off you you really are on holy ground you're listening exactly to God's Word making known his ways to Moses I have one proof that Moses wrote Genesis one down and that it was not known before the time of Moses and it's this there is no trace of the Sabbath until the time of Moses there is no trace of Adam or Noah or Abraham or Isaac of Jacob taking a day off every week indeed there is no trace of the week everything is in months by the moon and years by the Sun now because we have Genesis 1 at the beginning of our Bible we assume quite wrongly that Adam knew it and that Adam observed the Sabbath and everybody else did after that no there's no trace Adam was given a seven-day week as far as Genesis 2 and 3 go he looked after the Garden of Eden every day had a bit of time with the Lord in the evening and the cool of the evening but every day he was working he had a seven-day week and Abraham Isaac and Jacob were herdsmen and cows don't take a Sabbath I know that I used to get up at 4:00 every morning to milk 90 cows and I wish they did take a Sabbath but they didn't the Sabbath is unknown in nature it was through Moses that God revealed that he'd made the world in six days and taken a day off on the seventh it is from then on that the Sabbath becomes a feature of life and indeed when Moses gave the commandment to remember the Sabbath day he added the explanation because God created the world as if this is new knowledge to them as if he just told them so that is a proof that Genesis 1 was dictated to Moses and was not known before his day there are 1 and 2 other indications of that as well so we turn at last to the book itself into this amazing chapter with which it opens we're going to spend quite a lot of time in the chapter and I just want to spend the rest of this talk on the first 4 words in the beginning God Genesis is full of beginnings the beginning of everything else except God God doesn't begin here and that's a very important point God is already there when the Bible opens he was already there when the universe came to be he has always been there you see there has to be an eternal something or an eternal someone who was always there in order to bring our universe into being because nothing never turns into something by itself am i stretching you a bit it's a bit of a philosophy for you a bit of homespun philosophy but nothing ever becomes something by itself there has to be a cause and that causes ina an eternal something or an eternal someone and the Bible begins by saying it was an eternal someone and therefore the school boys question who made God is nonsense that's like asking can you have a square circle or can you fry ice it's nonsense because it's asking an incompatible question God never was made he made everything else he was always there now you must either say he was always there and eternal something someone or like Aristotle you must say it was always there and eternal something but that's the choice and you got to choose one or the other and the Bible clearly chooses and eternal someone it's the fundamental assumption of the Bible that God exists eternally that he has always been there that he always will be there and that he's the God who is his very name is a participle of the verb to be being some years ago I was praying and I said lord please give me an English word to correspond to the Hebrew Yahweh that would give me the feel of its meaning and excite me and immediately into my mind came this word always that's very close to God's name always he's always there he is always that's the nearest I can get in English to the Hebrew Yahweh in other words the Bible never tries to prove the existence of God it's a waste of time as far as the barber concerned he's there and he's always been there and you assume that to try and prove his existence as I've said is a waste of time he's just there he doesn't have to be explained what has to be explained is the existence of everything else now the very opposite of modern thinking modern thinking says everything else was always there now you've got to prove to him in the existence of God but no the Bible says God was always there and we have to explain now why anything else is there and that's how the book of Genesis approaches this huge question by the time of Moses of course everybody knew that God existed he had rescued them out of Egypt he divided the Red Sea he drowned the Egyptian army they knew that God was real when you've been through an experience like that you don't need proofs for the existence of God but I'm afraid modern man does because he hasn't experienced these things and he once proves when you read Hebrews chapter 11 you read two things about creation number one you read this by faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible and then a little later the same chapter says this whoever wants to find God must first believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek Him in other words the Bible says assume he's there assume that he wants you to find him and to know him and to love him and to serve him and then see what happens but start by accepting that in the beginning God was already there now the subject of Genesis 1 is not creation but the Creator that's the first mistake we made we make it's not about how our world came to be primarily it's about who made it come to be and in fact in just 31 verses the word God comes 35 times almost as if it's saying God God God God this is about God it's not so much the story of creation it's a picture of a creator and when you ask what does Genesis 1 tell us about God you find yourself with a long list and I've just made a list here for you number 1 I find out that God is personal he has a heart that feels he has a mind that thinks and can speak his thoughts he has a will and makes decisions and sticks to them all this is a personality God is not an it God is a he he's a full person with feelings thoughts and motives like we have secondly God is powerful when our late daughter was a little girl I remember reading Genesis 1 to her from a children's Bible and when I'm finished she just sent there quietly and then she said no sooner said than done and that was her summary it's a good summary what power what power just to say a thing and it happens what authority you got to be pretty high up to do that sort of thing and the first Ten Commandments in the Bible are all in Genesis 1 did you know there were Ten Commandments there count them up lady he would give Ten Commandments to us but the first Ten Commandments were given to our universe next he is uncreated he's already there he always was there he is being he is always but how creative he is when you when you learn that there are 6,000 varieties of Beatle what an artist what imagination no two blades of grass the same no two snowflakes the same no two grains of sand the same what imagination how creative we can produce seven million Volkswagen Beetles all the same but he has this creative mind the imagination gives great variety there are no two of us the same look at us what variety he is an orderly guard the symmetry and the mathematics of the universe are such that a Jew could find out that e equals mc-squared and that this applies to the whole universe it's mathematically so ordered we'll see more of that later he is a singular God because all the verbs are in the singular in the beginning God created the word created there is singular but he is also plural because the word God is not in the singular it's in the plural and it's not just a simple plural here would be the three words Aloha means one God Elohim means two but Elohim means three or more and the word used here is three or more so in the first sentence we have in the beginning a God who is three created but he must be one isn't that astonishing he's a three-in-one in the very first sentence and it takes the rest of the Bible to explain what that means but fancy using a triple word for God with singular verbs all the way through Genesis one above all Genesis one says he's a good god sometimes when I have to choose a subject six months before a meeting I can never think that far ahead so I just say good god and I said that covers everything I ever want to say and twice now posters have appeared with a horrible picture of me on them and then good God above and meetings have been packed but God is good and therefore everything he makes is good because he is good that's the message of Genesis beer under no mistake about this evil is not God's creation he is a loving God and wants to bless those he makes he's a Living God who active in this world speaking in this world doing things in this world he is a speaking God who communicates to us and wants to relate he's a God who is like us if we are made in His image he must be like us as well as we must be like him and yet he's a god who's unlike us because the one thing we can't do is create we can make things out of something else but we can't create things from nothing we cannot speak and there it is so he's unlike us well finally I want to finish this talk by pointing out that God is never identified with his creation there is a distinction between creator and creation from the beginning of the Bible and we must never get those confused the New Age is confusing them now the Creator is separate from his creation he can take a day off and be quite apart from all that he has made we must never identify him with what he has made to worship his creation is idolatry to worship the Creator is the truth then the next talk we look at some of the other implications of this amazing first chapter of Genesis 1

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Keywords: David Pawson (Person), Book Of Genesis (Book)

Id: 2R1XhYpNIQs

Length: 39min 33sec (2373 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 14 2013