Genesis: a Quick Overview | Whiteboard Bible Study

the book of Genesis is the first book of the Bible and it's the second longest book of the Bible there are a lot of interesting and well-loved stories in the book of Genesis like Noah in the ark and Joseph with his mini colored coat but what's Genesis all about well we're going to look at the book of Genesis at its story and also the structure of the book and when we look at how Genesis is structured we'll start to see what it's about and why it's so important to the rest of the Bible but before we do that let's take a quick look at how we got the book of Genesis and why it was written now the stories in Genesis are very old thousands of years old and they've been around for a long time before they were ever written down the stories in Genesis began as oral traditions that were passed down from Hebrew generation to Hebrew generation until they joined the law of Moses in the Torah so the law of Moses began as a list of conditions that an ancient prophet gave to the Israelites about how they should interact with their God and so the book of Genesis and the stories therein told about how the people of Israel even came to be and so they began to be associated with Moses laws over centuries scribes worked on the books of Moses and and the rest of the scriptures maintaining them and pulling them together into these into a beautifully constructed Old Testament which they called the Tanakh now as to why Genesis was written there are a few reasons and it makes Genesis a very very important book of the Bible in terms of understanding how the Bible works perhaps most important is the the book of Genesis sets the stage for divine in human affairs throughout the rest of the Bible the Bible is very much about God's relationship to humans whether it's God relating to humans through the nation of Israel or God relating to humans through His Son Jesus in the New Testament but Genesis that stage and tells us a little bit about the default relationship between humans and God tells us a little bit more about humans too this is where the Bible starts exploring humans purpose and human nature humans begin in the book of Genesis with a really cool purpose but throughout the book of Genesis we start seeing different elements of humanity that are not so good it tells Israel's origin story the nation of Israel had to come from somewhere every nation begins somewhere and this is the collection of stories that the Israelites told each other about where they came from and then finally it does give a message of hope for non-israelites it's mostly for the Israelites in terms of who was reading it for a very very long time before Christians came along but it is relevant to the rest of the world in a couple of ways now a really important thing to know about Genesis is its structure the book of Genesis is 50 chapters long but it neatly falls into two larger sections the first section just looks at the relationship between God and all of humanity and that's the first 11 chapters then the last 39 chapters and so chapters 12 through 50 really zoom in on God's relationship with the nation of Israel or rather the nation of Israel's ancestors and right in the middle we see God making a set of promises to a gentleman named Abram who goes on to be called Abraham so if you understand the structure part one has God and humanity and part two is God in Israel what's with a covenant set of promises in the middle then you're off to a really good start now another cool thing about Genesis structure is that both of these sections fall into roughly four subsections and so in the first section with God in humanity we have section on creation a section on a curse or when things start getting out of hand a section on judgment and salvation and then a section that talks about where the nations of the world came from likewise in the latter part of Genesis we have sections that are more focused on specific people so we have a section on Abraham a brief section on Isaac a section on Jacob whose name changes to Israel and then a section on Jacob's sons focusing on two in particular Joseph who is very famous and Judah who is not so famous but vital to the rest of the Bible story so let's look at these sections in a little bit more detail starting with section 1 God and humanity so in the first part of this book we see God creating everything right from the get-go so in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and what this story tells us is that while there was chaos when the earth was formless and void God brings an order out of that chaos and not only does God create an orderly world but he also brings any humans to help him run it in humans are said to bear God's image which means they they represent God and they're supposed to reflect the qualities of God and they're supposed to be running the world almost as governors for God and the humans get to live in this world with God in fact there's a lot of imagery of to the ancient Israelites would have sounded like a temple and so we end the creation segment with humans and God living together in this garden temple in the ancient Near a Near East a temple was a place where the gods and the humans could coexist for a while and so Genesis opens by saying there was a time when God and humans could be in the same place at the same time they they started in garden temple which is important to Hebrews through the rest of the Bible because the Hebrew temple in Jerusalem takes center stage for most of the rest of the Old Testament next we have things getting out of hand with a curse and there are two really big pieces of this section that are interwoven together there's this sense of a supernatural or divine evil a serpent comes into the garden and tricks the humans into rebelling against God and then afterward we get some very crazy you know just out of this world sort of sorts of stories about the the sons of God having relationships with humans there are these folks called Nephilim which may be the ancient Jews believed were part demon part human maybe they believed that they were just regular humans that became so powerful that they were worshipped as gods there's a lot of debate on that but the important thing to know is that we get this sense of a supernatural evil that is corrupting the world but also humans are corrupting the world too you've heard about Cain and Abel well Cain kills his brother but then later on we have humans becoming even more violent so from chapters 3 to 6 we see just things getting really really bad in both the supernatural sense and in the the human sense this is how the ancient Jews talked about that time but there is a glimmer of hope in that God says that one day there will be a human who can defeat that serpent which represents that divine evil that has come into the picture so good news right there at the beginning of the first book of the Bible next we have this story of judgment and salvation so humanity gets so bad that God sends a flood and it wipes out most of most of life in the world however one family remained loyal to God is saved and so we have these waters these chaotic waters coming back over the world but God rescues a handful of people from that fate and this says that he really values human life he wants human life to continue to grow and flourish and so then that takes us into the next section where we have all the people multiplying and we get many many people on on the earth who decide to build their own structure they want to they want to build a tower that reaches into heaven and you've probably heard this story the Tower of Babel and so at the end of the first section we have this this strange progression where once humans lived with with God in in a temple a garden temple and everything was fine and by the end we have humans trying to build a name for themselves God doesn't like that so God says okay I'm going to distribute all of humanity into various nations and so each people group gets a language each people groups gets a land and then later on in the Torah we find that the ancient Israelites believed that God also distributed the nation's to different gods and that's where these nations may have gotten their Pantheon's that's that's the outlook that that Moses has in Deuteronomy at least and so God distributes them all so we have this this spot where humans are rebelling against God we we have God divvying up the humans and the humans going all to their own gods but then God chooses one family to have a relationship with and that family starts with a man named Abraham God comes to Abraham in Genesis 12 and makes a promise to him he says he's going to make Abraham a very great person in history he says that he's going to be with Abraham he's going to give Abraham many descendants many nations and kings will come from Abraham which is very important because when we meet Abraham he's old Abraham is going to have a land the land of Canaan the Promised Land if you will that's why it's called the Promised Land in the Bible and then God is going to bless all the nations of the world through Abraham's descendants pretty cool this set of promises this blessing is passed from Abraham to his son Isaac to Isaac's son Jacob and on to the nation of Israel now let's look a little bit at the second part of Genesis so part 2 of Genesis we have Abraham this is chapters 12 through 24 Abraham is called by God he wanders around for his whole life he never really settles down he sojourned across the land that he was promised and through other lands as well he is tested by God but he passes the test because he believes in God and later on in the Bible Abraham is called Abraham the believer Abraham's life is pretty interesting when you compare it to the rest of the Old Testament because the life of Abraham kind of has some parallels to the nation of Israel before they got to the land remember Israel was called by God out of Egypt Israel wandered around in the wilderness for 40 years before they got to the land so very interesting parallel next we have Isaac who lives his life in the promised land and he's blessed very much he has a great deal of wealth and he has two sons this is kind of like Israel's history later on in the Old Testament as well Israel inhabits their their territory they get to the promised land later on in the book of Joshua and they stay there for a good long while and not one but two kingdoms come out of the the people of Israel so again kind of an interesting parallel that that foreshadows what's going to happen in the of the Old Testament Jacob is a deceptive little guy he tricks his brother out of his brothers inheritance and because of that he needs to run away he's exiled back east and that's where he starts his own family but he eventually returns back to the land that God promised his ancestors and lives there again this is a lot like what we're going to see in the rest of the Old Testament Israel as a nation is going to be exiled they'll be taken into captivity off to Babylon but they will be able to return back from Babylon after 70 years so again we have some foreshadowing of the rest of the Old Testament happening here in the book of Genesis and then lastly we have chapters 37 to 50 focusing on the sons of Jacob so Jacob had 12 sons those twelve sons roughly mapped to 12 tribes of Israel and two sons in particular are very important one is Joseph he's the one with the famous jacket that his father gave him Joseph was the youngest of his brothers for a while and he had these dreams of greatness he was his father's favorite son and his brothers were jealous of him so I they sell Joseph into slavery and after that Joseph is tested his integrity is tested his loyalty to God is tested his wisdom is tested but he passes those tests and then emerges as this ruler and Savior who saves many many people from a famine through his trust in God his wisdom and his perception so we have this story of someone who was of low esteem in his family who was betrayed tested passes the tests and becomes this ruler Savior foreshadows another part of the Bible write the New Testament Judah has some very interesting story lines here as well so Judah is another one of the sons of Jacob Judah is the one who has the idea to sell Joseph into slavery not a great guy then he goes on to make some other really really weird and bad decisions but eventually he humbles himself and he offers up his own life on behalf of a later younger brother and offers two offers to die and his younger brothers stead and so we have a bit of a story of redemption for Judah and at the end of the book we have this blessing given to Judah saying that from Judah will come a king who will rule over the nations in peace and justice and it'll be a really good time and that's a really cool promise to end on for Judah so we have these things that are anticipating that Messianic King which Christians believe is Jesus so both Joseph and Judah give us a taste of what's to come beyond the Old Testament it's really cool and you can find all of this in the structure of the book of Genesis itself so there you have it that's what Genesis is all about thanks so much for watching I hope this was very helpful to you and if it was subscribe to this channel that way I can notify you once the next video goes live thanks so much

Channel: OverviewBible

Views: 133,279

Keywords: Bible study, genesis, old testament, torah

Id: l4TB-QKpotI

Length: 16min 45sec (1005 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 05 2018