The message of the Bible might be the best place to begin our study of the Old Testament. What is the Bible all about? We could state it as follows: God desires to glorify Himself by blessing humankind.
The message of the Pentateuch (Torah) is that people can experience God's blessing by trusting Him (believing His word) and by obeying Him (following His initiative).
Genesis is in the Bible primarily to teach us this lesson. People can enjoy a personal relationship with God and thereby realize their own fulfillment as human beings only through trust in God and obedience to God. This is the message statement. Genesis reveals that God is faithful to His promises and powerful enough to bring them to fulfillment.
Genesis reveals that God originally intended people to have an immediate relationship with their Creator. Evidences for this are as follows.
1. God made man as a special creation (2:7).
2. He made man with special care (2:7).
3. He made man in His own image (1:26-27).
4. He regarded man as His son (1:28-30).
5. He consistently demonstrated concern for man's welfare (3:9).
God's immediate relationship with Adam was broken by the Fall (ch. 3). In the Fall man did two things.
1. He failed to trust God's goodness with his mind.
2. He rebelled against God's government with his will (3:6).
God then took the initiative to re-establish the relationship with man that He had created man to enjoy. He provided a covering for man's sin until He would finally remove it. This temporary covering came through the sacrificial system.
Throughout Genesis we see that people in general consistently failed to trust and obey God (e.g., in Noah's day, at Babel, in the patriarchal period).
Genesis also records what God has done to encourage people to trust and obey Him. It is only by living by these two principles that people can enjoy a relationship with God and realize all that God created them to experience.
On the one hand, Genesis reveals much about the person and work of God. This revelation helps us trust and obey Him. It is through His personal revelations to the main characters in Genesis that God revealed Himself initially (e.g., Adam and Eve, Noah, the patriarchs).
On the other hand, Genesis reveals much about the nature of man. Not only did God reveal the perversity of man, but He also identified positive examples of faith and obedience in the lives of the godly.
In Genesis we learn that faith in God is absolutely essential if we are to have fellowship with Him and realize our potential as human beings.
Faith is the law of life. If one lives by faith he flourishes, but if he does not, he fails. The four patriarchs are primarily examples of what faith is and how it manifests itself. In each of their lives we learn something new about faith.
Abraham's faith demonstrates unquestioning obedience. When God told him to do something, he did it. This is the most basic characteristic of faith. That is one reason why Abraham is "the father of the faithful."God revealed Himself nine times to Abraham and each time Abraham's response was unquestioning obedience.
Isaac's faith helps us see the quality of passive acceptance that characterizes true faith in God. This was his response to God's two revelations to him.
Jacob's story is one of conflict with God until he came to realize his own limitations. Then he trusted God. We can see his faith in his acknowledged dependence on God. God's seven revelations to him eventually led him to this position.
Joseph's life teaches us what God can do with a person who trusts Him consistently in the face of adversity. The outstanding characteristic of Joseph's life was his faithful loyalty to God. He believed God's two revelations to him in dreams even though God's will did not seem to be working out as he thought it would. Patient faith and its reward shine through the story of Joseph.
Faith, the key concept in Genesis, means trusting that what God has prescribed is indeed best for me and waiting for God to provide what He has promised. A person of faith is one who commits to acting on this basis even though he or she may not see how it is best.
The Pentateuch is all about God, man, and our relationship. In our study of it, we will be building a model to show how each new book builds on what has preceded. The key concept in Genesis is faith.
