Transcript

The book of Genesis, and by the way, Genesis is Greek for a Greek word that means the origin, or the source, or the beginning. Starts with a Hebrew word, which is the Hebrew title of this book. In fact, if Jesus would have been in the synagogue 2,000 years ago, and would have asked for the book of Genesis, He wouldn't have said, give me the book of Genesis. He would have said, give me the "Bereshith". Because the Hebrews named their books of the Bible after the first word of the book. That's what they called it. And so that's why Arithmoi is the name of the fourth book. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers. Because it's the numbering, it says, and He numbered. And Exodus is, and He called. And whatever the first word is in Hebrew is what they called it. This book in Hebrew is Bereshith, which means, "In the head of all things." And if you were reading in Hebrew, the book, the first book of Moses, which is the book of Genesis, it would say, in the head of all things, God created the Heavens and the Earth. That's just in Hebrew. What that means is, that it was an absolute beginning, before which is nothing as we know it, but God in three persons. Nothing.

Genesis 1:1 is the beginning of everything that is not infinite, eternal, and immortal. God existed, as far as we know, alone. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. He hasn't revealed to us that there was anything else but Him. And He brought us into the picture. Makes us important. Why do you think astronomers want to say that we are a little, green, blue, blob, among billions of potential planets, among infinite stars and galaxies? Why do they want to reduce the Earth down to being so insignificant in the universe? Because they don't want people to think that we're so important that God has centered His attention on this planet. Part of the reason why the real smart scientific Christians of our age are giving in to this idea of the multibillion year old universe is that they don't realize that the Bible says that God created the Earth, and the Earth was the center of all of His creation, and it says in Isaiah, He rolled out the universe from the Earth. Why do you think that there aren't new stars showing up every few years? Because God rolled them out of here. If there is an Andromeda galaxy or some quasar out there that's twenty-two billion light years away, guess what? God rolled it out right from here and put it out twenty-two... It says in Isaiah, He rolled out the heavens like a scroll in every direction.

That's why the scientists can't understand why all of this light is coming to us and we don't see anything new showing up. We look with stronger telescopes, but their light is already here. And so, the only thing they conclude is that the Earth has been here for that many billion years for those light years to get to us. As light signals to get to us, but it's not because this is the center of God's creative universe. Old, the old medieval astronomers and philosophers had it right when they said the Earth is the center of the universe because that's what God thinks too. And this is the only place that Christ came to, this is the only place Christ died, and this is the only place that the whole universe is going to get freed from the curse of sin. On this planet. This is the center, and that's why Genesis is so important.

This book introduces, in just the first 11 chapters, there are 50 chapters by the way, the Bible was not inspired in the order it's in. But the Hebrews put it together in a certain way, and so did the New Testament Christians, so that there's an amazing symmetry. If you want to think about the Old Testament, there's 17 books, 5 in the middle, and 17 at the other end of the 39. The first 17 are primarily historical. There's 5 that are, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon that are totally different than 5 middle books. And then there's 17 more that are prophetic. The first five of the 17 in the front end are the five books of Moses. The first five of the last 17 are the five major prophets. There's such symmetry in the way they put this together because they wanted people to remember where the Bible is and what's going on.

But the Bible introduces, in just its first 11 chapters, most of the major doctrines of Christianity. And here they are. The doctrines of God, and the doctrine of creation, the doctrine of man, the doctrine of sin, and the doctrine of the coming to redeem and rescue sinners. The doctrine of divine love, and the doctrine of judgment. And the doctrine about the consequences of sin. The doctrine of fellowship with the Creator God, how to get it, how to maintain it, why He wants us. The doctrine of worship, how you approach God, and how you, you please Him. And also, the doctrine of the family.

And you know what? That's why people don't like Genesis. Do you know what the Bible says? The Bible says that God made man, and from man formed woman. The word for man in Hebrew is ish, and the word for woman is ishah, which means out of man. Wo man in English. Woman is out of man. And so that's why she corresponds to man and finds her completion in man. It's very significant. Now, the feminists of our day don't like that, so cut out those chapters. And the gay, lesbian, homosexual community doesn't like the fact that God says He created one man for one woman for life. When you get to Genesis 19, you find out the origin of sodomy. It was a perversion of God's way. And what did God do when He first encountered a blatant homosexual community? Rained down fire from Heaven and burned them up. Boy, cut those chapters out, right? So, you see why it's so attacked. Nobody wants that. God started out with a nuclear family, with a man and woman and with children, and He laid down the foundation and right away it started getting whittled away at.

Now, these ten areas are enlarged upon through the Scriptures. Note the starting point for each of these doctrines as they weave through the Word of God. Now remember I told you that a lot of concepts in the Bible are found in germ form or found in very simple forms, very vague forms in Genesis. And they weave their way all the way through the Bible, and they're culminated in the book of the Revelation.

But number one, the word “God”. That's the first doctrine we're going to look at. And the first word that's significant in the book of Genesis is, after that Bereshith is, God. And it's the word Elohim. And what's interesting is, it's a plural noun. Him, the i m, means plural. Whenever you... teraphim means more than one tera, okay? Whenever you have an i m on the end, that's the way they, that's the way Hebrews pluralize stuff. We put an s, they put an i m, okay? So, it's the letter i and the letter m. But it's followed by a singular word. Barah is singular. So, the first three words, if you were reading in Hebrew, because Hebrew is an oriental language, and they start over on the left, or the right-hand side and go this way, across the pages. Actually, their books start in the back, or what we call the back. They start here. Actually, they were doing it before we were. Who's backward? We are. Western culture is backward of Eastern culture, but so the first three words are Bereshith, Elohim, Barak. Okay, Elohim is a plural noun, but it's followed by a singular verb, which emphasizes monotheism. We believe in only one God.

But He is a triune God. And you notice if you're reading through Genesis 1, it says let, what? Us make man in our image. One God, who's talking to Himself. Now, the psychiatrist of the day would tell him, a little skitzy there. No, but actually it's God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. From the first, actually, from the second and third word of the Bible, the Trinity just comes out blatantly. And of course, that's an important doctrine, the doctrine of God. But the first words of Genesis, you open in your Bible, if you're there in Genesis 1:1, I want to show you something. Because just those opening words in Genesis dispel any notion of the following errors.

And by the way, there are just lists and lists of these. That's why I told you I've been reading these 15 or 20 books that I'm charting through. And you should see the list that these men have made of what you can find in just these opening words. But I just pulled out five of them. Like the five, all of them mentioned. Number one, atheism. Atheism is, of course, a belief there is no God. You know what it says in Genesis 1:1? In the beginning, God. So, atheism is wrong, because before there was anything else, especially any atheist, there was God. Now, have you ever heard someone say that they're an agnostic? Agnosco means, I don't know. You know what that is in Latin? If you translated the… agnostic is a Greek word you put into English. They call it transliterated. You didn't translate, you just brought the word across. It's a Greek word, agnosco. Agnostic. But the Latin people translated agnosco into Latin. Do you know what an agnostic is in Latin? You want to know a Latin word? Ignoramus ignorant. That's what agnostic, when you say I don't know, it's ignorant in Latin. Whether you're an atheist, atheos, without God, or you're an agnostic, you don't know. Basically, you're incorrect because God, who is the only one that has revealed Himself through a revelation, humans wrote all the other books that are religious. I don't know if you realize that. If you study them very much, humans wrote them. The Persian mystery writers, they said that the Earth rests on the back of elephants, and when flies bite the elephants and they go like that, we have earthquakes. Isn't that profound? That, that's really profound.

Did you know you'll never find a scientific error in the Bible? Not one. You will find science a few years behind, and they're always catching up. Did you know up until the year 1850 that every major educated person in the western world didn't believe the Book of Acts was true? And in about 1850-70 a guy named Ramsey took his Bible, and landed on the shore of Turkey, and said, this town is called Mytilene. That might be Miletus. He said, let's see, if Paul walked three days, we should come to Troas. And he walked there, put his shovel down, and guess what he found? The ancient city of Troas. which is Troas in the Bible. Boy, that's there. So, he went over here, and he walked for another week, and he put his shovel down, and he found Pisidian Antioch, which is Antioch in Pisidia, where Paul ministered. And you know what he spent his life doing for 30 years? Putting his shovel down everywhere the book of Acts says Paul went, and guess what he found? Every city Paul mentioned. And Paul uses funny words, like he called the rulers of Thessalonica, Ethnarchs. You ever heard of an Ethnarch? Ever seen an Ethnarch? I saw one at the zoo once, I thought, but I wasn't sure. But you know what an Ethnarch was? It was the ruler of Thessalonica. That's just what they called themselves. Like, what's Oklahoma called? The what state? Sooner State. Nobody else called themselves a Sooner, but they jumped over the lines and stole the land. They went over too soon. That's a local term, right? We would only know about Sooners. Ethnarchs is not anywhere else in the whole world except Thessalonica. When they uncovered that city and pulled all the rubble back and look right there on the pavement tiles it says, "Dedicated by the Ethnarch of Thessalonica."

And you know what the archaeologists did? They said, the Bible... they didn't say it's true... they said it's a historic record, it is exactly what it says. And you've never, the Bible has never been disproven historically, scientifically, ethically, anyway, it's never been disproven, ever.

Do you know what the Book of Mormon says? The Book of Mormon has so many mistakes in it, they're constantly re editing it and saying, of course, there are some mistakes in the early days. Like they just had a revelation that, that black people can, about ten years ago, that black people can join the Mormon Church. One of those guys made a mistake. For 150 years, blacks were excluded from the Mormon Church. They had another one. Did you know they were going to be put out, the Mormons were going to be put out of America? They were going to be banished because of their polygamy. One of the prophets had a revelation that now God has changed His mind and polygamy isn't good anymore until we get to Heaven. You see what I mean? You'll never find that with the Bible. God doesn't change a word of the Bible because it's always been inspired and accurate. Elohim dispels the idea of atheism.

Number two, polytheism. You notice what it says in the beginning? Gods? No. God. Singular. God. Though it has a plural ending which speaks of a triunity. It's one God created. So, there is no polytheism. There aren't many gods. There's one God.

Thirdly, materialism. That's the belief that matter is eternal. Matter is not eternal because God preceded matter and created it from nothing. So, materialism is an inaccurate, philosophical belief. Pantheism, that makes God and the universe identical. The universe is God, and God is the universe, and God is matter, and matter is God. No, that's not true, because God made the Heavens and the Earth. That's all the material things. And God precedes them, and God is distinct from them, so pantheism is not true. And finally, the concept of fatalism, that's the doctrine of chance, I just read an interesting article in Discovery Magazine, or Discover, I'm not sure what it's called, it's that science magazine, but you know what it said? Finally, a scientist has made a cell, the first cell ever created by a scientist. What he did was he took all this material that would be like composition of meteorites, and he kept sprinkling them in these pools of the solution he made, and actually what he did was, he sprinkled in all of the ingredients of a cell, and it started bubbling and fermenting, and inside those bubbles and fermentation, bacteria started growing inside of his goop. And so, he said he made a cell. Of course, it was a controlled thing, and he added all the right ingredients, kept it at the right temperature and everything else. But he started a little bit of almost life. And he said that's how the Earth started. He said meteorites dropped down and crashed here, and then the water started raining on it. And wait a minute, how did we get rain? How did we get a system where there's condensation and then, or evaporation and then condensation and rain coming down on the spot where the meteorite hit? How did you even get the place for the meteorites to hit? That doesn't matter, but it happened and over billions of years those drops of water, it's ridiculous. There's no fatalism, there's no chance. It says God created. It was a deliberate act.

The second doctrine we need to see is not only the doctrine of God, but number two is, that doctrine of creation. And creation is described using four words in the book of Genesis. And the first one is Bara, which means God making something from nothing. That's used in 1:1, 1:21, 1:27, and 2:4. Secondly, there's a second word, Asah, which is in 1:16, 25, 26 and 2:2, which denotes making something from materials already created. Third is Yatsar, 2:7-19. It's a beautiful word for fashioning or making as a potter. And that's used for making man from the dust of the Earth. God fashioned us from the dust of the Earth. I just read an analysis of what the human body is made of. If you cremated us and did a chemical spectral analysis of what we are, you know what we're made of? The common elements of dust. What does the Bible say? God made us from the dust of the Earth, He really did. Isn't that amazing? And He breathed into us His Spirit. We became a living being.

Fourthly, banah, which means to build. So, the whole doctrine of creation, and by the way I am not smart enough. I'm not smart, period. But I'm not smart enough to possibly believe that anything could possibly be true except what God says. You know it says, in the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth. And I think I read, about half the commentators I read, wrote during the period of about 1920 to about 1950. About half these big books I was reading today. And a lot of them have, in their books, caved into modern scientific thought. And they said, Scientists say there are all these layers and all these fossils and so there has to be, it couldn't have happened like the Bible said, and so they're postulating. I just read one. You ever heard of Hugh Ross? The Creator in the Cosmos and the Finger of God. This guy is a Christian, best-selling millions of books. Hugh Ross, astrophysicist. Navigators are publishing his book no less. Do you know what he believes? Now just, with what you know about God and the Bible, this is what Hugh Ross teaches. He says that the universe is 12 billion years old, that God put everything condensed into a blob, and then stepped back, and that blob exploded in the Big Bang. And it evolved to the point of where we got now. That's a problem for me right there. You know how he explains all these skeletons Dr. Leakey is finding? Dr. Leakey out there in the Ulduvai Gorge, in the rift, the great rift that runs through the Dead Sea is part of that same rift. The great rift, the Afro European Asian rift. They're finding all these petrified bones of humans, actually they'll find a tooth and they build a whole skull around one tooth and all that, but Dr. Leakey's found these millions-of-year-old human beings. Do you know what this Christian, Hugh Ross, said those are? He said that there were humanoids on the Earth. They didn't have a soul or a spirit. They were animals that looked just like people. He said they painted on cave walls, and he said they made axe heads, and they made flint arrows and knives, and they hunted the dinosaurs, and they killed each other, and they dragged the women around by their hair, and all, all the stuff from Fred Flintstone. And he said, and then God destroyed all that and created Adam recently.

Now wait a minute. I thought with Adam sin entered the world and death by sin. Why were these people killing each other with knives and dragging the women around by hair if there was no sin? I would think with no sin you wouldn't do stuff, caveman stuff. The doctrine of creation is, if you're just simple enough to believe it, it means that this Earth is not very old. That's basically what it means, and that's what the Bible says.

But, number three, man was created in perfection 1:26-31. He falls into sin, he's alienated from God and cursed, he's driven from intimacy with God, chapter 3:20-24. That's the beginning of the doctrine of man. Now, it develops all the way through the Scripture, but that's the foundation.

Number four, and this is an important one, fill in the blank, it's the doctrine of sin and the coming Redeemer. And this is where it starts getting very exciting. And if you look at chapter 3:15, I want to show you something. I want to show you the first occurrence of the Gospel in the Bible. That's in Genesis 3:15. But it says Sin, the coming Redeemer, is first dealt with in the Proto Evangelium. Now what is that? A new kind of jelly? Like Concord grape jelly? No. Proto means first. Evangelium means Gospel. So, it's the first reference to the Gospel. Here it is in chapter 3:15. God says, I'll put enmity between you, serpent, and the woman, Eve, between your seed, serpent, and her seed. Oh, women don't have seed. Oh, Mary wasn't married and had a child. The seed of the woman is a veiled reference to one of the key doctrines of the New Testament, which we call the what? Virgin birth of Christ. That Joseph wasn't His father. That Mary was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, and that child which was formed within was from God, and it was God in human flesh. Genesis 3:15 says, between your seed and her seed, He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel. Who's who? He's saying, He, that's her seed, which is no other than the Lord Jesus Christ, is going to, and the word bruise is crush, Jesus is going to crush the serpents head, serpent is going to, what does it say at the end of verse 15? He's going to bruise your heel. What happened to Christ? The serpent bruised Him, nailed Him to a cross, nailed His feet to the cross, scourged Him, the whole thing. You know what Paul said? He said that none of the archon of this world knew what they were doing when they crucified Christ.

I think Steve Green's philosophy's pretty good. You ever heard his song "Just look the gates of Hell are shaking, crumbling from the inside out? You ever heard that? Some of you aren't old enough to remember that was an oldie about ten years ago, but what Steve Green was saying was, which is what the Bible says, that Satan didn't know what was going on with Christ. He tried to stymie the whole plan. He knew God had a plan. So, what'd he do? He came in and he got Eve. So, God says, that's right. Still my plan. Man goes into sin with woman. It's still my plan. So, then he got Cain to kill Abel because Abel was the righteous one. The devil thought he had it. He thought he ruined God's plan. But Adam and Eve had another child, Enos, and it went on through and so then he says I'm going to defile the whole race. So, Genesis 6 says he got the whole human race. Every imagination of their thought Genesis 6:5 was only evil continually. So, he says now I've got Him, but God found who was a righteous man and his three sons and their wives. So, God puts him on the boat, the ark, and floods the whole planet. Water was higher than Mount Everest. Where do you think the Grand Canyon came from? Where do you think the fact that in Australia there are huge coal beds in the middle of pure white sand? How do you get coal in the middle of pure white sand? Coal is formed at the bottom of a bog where you have trees dying for years and it keeps getting deeper and the pressure pushes it down and it makes coal. How do you get it with pure white sand? It has to be dramatically quickly formed. How do you get frozen woolly mammoths in Siberia? How do you get those? How do you freeze dry a 30- or 40-ton animal so that you can still eat its meat, which they do? You can, if you go to certain parts of Russia, you can eat dinosaur burgers, genuinely. How do you get that? Only through a global cataclysmic flood. Okay, Satan says, I got Him. God rescues him through Noah. Then they go a little bit further, and Satan gets them all united at the Tower of Babel. He says, I got Him again. God finds Abraham. He gets Hagar involved. He says, I'm going to defile the seed. So now we got the Arabs. Abraham's other children are the Arabs. That's why they're fighting all the time. Like our children, right? Do you ever have brothers and sisters who fight? That's what the Arabs and Israelis do. They're fighting. They're relatives. Fighting over the same land. Actually, they were there first. Ishmael's older than Isaac. But God didn't give it to the firstborn. He gave it to Isaac, the Jew. So, on and on we go and so then all of a sudden Satan sees what's going on, so he says I'm going to defile the Israelite nation and he does, and so God says that's okay because I'm going to have a future King that's going to come through the line. So, Christ is born.

So, what did He do? He sent Herod to kill all the babies. See Satan's been trying to stop the plan from the Garden of Eden. Trying to stop the plan and he finally thought he had Him. He got an insider Judas in. Judas comes in and betrays Christ, so they, they get Him, and they pounce on Him and they, Jesus says, who do you want? He says, I am. Boom! They all just lay on their faces. Why? Cause it says in Philippians, at the name of Jesus everyone is going to bow. All He has to do is say His name, and everybody bows down. Can you imagine trying again, I am. Boom! They go back down. I Boom! They go back down. And, He could have just done that all night, could just stand there, Jesus, boom, and knock them down. But He didn't do that, because the purpose was to go to the cross, but Satan didn't know that, and so he takes Him there and he gets Him nailed to the cross, and they're having their celebration, and Paul says that none of the rulers of this world knew, both the Roman, the Jewish, or the occultic rulers of this world, the god of this world, Satan, until Christ came out from the grave. And that's what's promised right here. He says, Satan's going to bruise Christ's heel in 3:15, but Christ is going to crush his head.

Now I want you to know something. It's not in the Millennium or the Tribulation that Satan gets defeated. He already is. He already is. Now don't underestimate his power. The Bible doesn't tell us to speak to Satan. Michael, the Archangel, the greatest of God's angels, did not talk to Satan. He said, the Lord rebuked you. I'm not going to talk to you. Jesus gave him the Word of God, and I, if anybody could do a one on one, I think Jesus and Satan would, that would be an unfair matchup. Christ could incinerate him, but even Christ used the Word.

We have to be careful, but the Bible in Genesis talks about the coming Redeemer. Let me keep reading. The coming One is talked about in Genesis 49:10. He's called Shiloh. It says in that Shiloh, until Shiloh comes, and that's a reference to Christ. But also, in the Book of Genesis, there are a lot of types. A type is a historical fact that illustrates a spiritual truth. And there are many types of Christ. Adam both entered in the world, sinless, both as the head of creation. Adam's, a type of Christ, in fact, it says in Romans 5 that the first Adam took us into sin the last Adam, brings us righteousness. Jesus isn't the second Adam, He's the last one. There's no, nothing else. The first Adam blew it, and Christ is the last Adam, and He didn't blow it. He won it. Abel. Abel offered a blood sacrifice and was murdered. Jesus was murdered and became a blood sacrifice. Abel is a type of Christ. Melchizedek. This mysterious guy in Genesis 14. It says he doesn't have a father; he doesn't have a mother he's without descendants, and he just, he's always existed. Now, I think that Melchizedek was a Theophany or something. I'm not sure. He's a hard to understand one, but you know what his name is Mal Melek. ?e?eq or malki? I can't do my Hebrew, but what it means is malki-?e?eq means king of righteousness or righteous king. And he's also called the king of peace, and that's exactly a type of Christ. He's a righteous king and the King of peace. Joseph is another type of Christ. Both were dearly loved by their fathers. Both were betrayed by their brothers, and both came back to save the family. That, there's so many beautiful types in the book of Genesis.

Number five. The fifth doctrine is the divine love. It's seen in the God who seeks out, fallen mankind and rescues them as in Noah. A sixth doctrine is a doctrine of judgment, and judgment is upon mankind in the curse of Genesis 3:14-19. It's on Cain and it's on the godless world that gets flooded out.

And finally, it's on the idolatrous nations. And one thing God warns us about is, that whenever mankind gets totally united, they're totally united against God. And what I think when I think about Yitzhak Rabin getting killed, I think that's indicative of when we are, because what was his purpose? His purpose was world peace. And guess what? When the Anti-christ comes, he doesn't come as a warrior. He comes on a white horse, and he's coming as a peacemaker. What do we hear all the time? Peace. What's the European Economic Union talking about? Peace. What are they talking about in Russia? Peace. And when they say peace and safety, the Scriptures say beware. And we're, I don't look for atomic holocaust. I look for a global peace, with a global economy, global monetary system. And one peacemaker is going to rise up, and he's going to say, I'm going to take Jesus’ place, because I brought peace to the world.

The consequences of sin, that's the seventh doctrine. Those consequences are pain and strife. That's what it says in 3:16. It says you're going to have pain and sorrow. You're going to have to work. A hardship and labor. By the way, labor was before the curse. There's nothing wrong with work. It's just work became hard after the curse.

Fellowship with the Creator God, doctrine eight. It was perfect in the garden. It was broken and offered a restoration through blood sacrifice in 3:21 and 4:4. God offered covenants, which become the scarlet thread of redemption. Look at Hebrews 9:22, which is a long ways from Genesis, but I want you to see something. It says in Hebrews 9:22, something very interesting that's all the way through the Bible. It says, "According to the law, almost all things are purified with blood," and listen, "and without shedding of blood there is no redemption." Did you know from cover to cover there's what's called, throughout the centuries, the scarlet cord of redemption. It's the thread that goes throughout the Bible. Do you remember what Rahab had to stick out the window so that her part of the wall wouldn't fall down? A red cord. Do you know what God clothed fallen men and women with? Not the banana leaves that they sewed together themselves. What did he give them? Animal skin. And those animals paid dearly to give up their skins, right? It's like breakfast. The chicken had a contribution. The pig paid the ultimate price, right? You get it? To have animal skins, the animal had to die. And that means their blood was what? Shed. And right from the beginning, God said there's only one thing that can cover up sin. What is it? Blood. And what can wash away my sin? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

Okay. Worship is tied to sacrifice and obedience. If you read in chapter 4 of Genesis, that's about Cain and Abel. You remember, they're both pictures. One is a picture of human achievement, and the other is a picture of divine accomplishment. Abel said, God told me what to do, and I'm going to do it, and he sacrificed a lamb to God. Cain says, I'm going to do my best, and I'm going to give it to God, and he brought a watermelon. Now which one was God pleased with? A watermelon, or a bloody sacrifice? Only the bloody sacrifice. And that's why worship is based on sacrifice and obedience.

And then finally the family was started by God. It's corrupted by sinful humanity. In chapter 4 we find polygamy. By chapter 19 we find homosexuality. In chapter 34 we have rape. And in chapter 38 we have incest and prostitution. And that's how far man has gone. And remember this, the human race did not start out in the caves and get civilized. If you look in chapter 5 of Genesis, you find out that the first thing out of the garden they do is they build cities. They are civilized, they are involved in metallurgy, they are involved in making musical instruments, and they are involved in agronomy, that's animal husbandry, and the whole cultivated world. They were not going around fighting woolly mammoths and, eating raw flesh, dancing around fires. They were living in cities, and they were civilized and cultured. Cavemen came after that because of the decline and fall of humanity, and there are still cavemen on this planet, right? New Guinea, and New Hebrides. There are all kinds of them. Why? Because that's the place man grew in his depravity. He gets uncivilized. God started us out as civilized.

Let me just give you a few more facts. The book of Genesis covers more time than all the rest of the Bible put together. Did you know that? Genesis starts at creation, which the most conservative people say was 4,000 years ago. Maybe it was more, but it wasn't billions or millions. It continues to the death of Joseph, which is in 1805 B.C. So, let's just say it's 4,000 years, that means that covers 2,195 years, the book of Genesis. The rest of the Bible goes from 1805 B.C. to A.D. 95, which is only 1,900 years. I'll tell you one thing that I'm absolutely convinced of the Earth is much younger than anybody realizes. It's much younger, and God has got a great plan ahead, and people are going to start believing when He gets involved more directly.

The entire book's around, revolves around, four great events, and those are Creation, Fall, Flood, and the Tower of Babel. That's the four events. The four people that it revolves around are Abraham, that's the one God chose. He was a Gentile. He was a moon worshipper, in the city of the Ur of the Chaldees. That's the city of Babylonian people called Ur, right on the ancient banks of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. And he worshiped the moon god. Do you know what the symbol of the Muslims, their symbol is? The Crescent. They still worship the moon god, and that's the basis of their religion. His, Abraham's life, is a life of faith and failure of covenants and promise. Isaac was a link to the covenant. Jacob was a man. God transformed and who fathered the 12 tribes, and Joseph was a tool in God's hand.

Things that are started in Genesis get finished in Revelation. That's why Genesis and Revelation are so closely linked. And here's what we find: Creation of Heaven and Earth is in 1:1. There is a new Heaven and a new Earth in Revelation 21:1. So what was began or started back here in Genesis God finishes in Revelation.

Secondly, the Earth is created in Genesis 1:1. What happens in, in Revelation 21:1? Wow, what passed away? Earth, yeah, the Earth that was created in 1:1 is gone. Friends don't put all your stock in that company on this planet because it's going. Okay, send some stock to Heaven. Earth passes away in 21:1.

Okay, light is created in 1:3, but Christ becomes the light of the universe in 21:23 of Revelation. Night is instituted in Genesis 1:4. What does chapter 21, verse 25 of Revelation say about night? No more night. Now whenever I teach young people, they get so excited, because kids don't like to go to bed. When you get to me my age, you want to go to bed, you're so tired you wish you could sleep more, but when you're young, you just are boundless in energy. In Heaven there's no more night. That means it doesn't get dark. That means there's no cessation. There's no cycle needed of renewal. We are immortal. You know how the poet says? Think of it. Of stepping on a shore and finding it Heaven. Of breathing new air and finding it celestial. Of feeling invigorated and finding immortality. That's what Heaven is. No night. Yeah, you don't have to jog and eat health food anymore. You're just immortal. Okay?

The next one, it says in Genesis 2:2, that God rested. What does it say in chapter 14, verse 13 of Revelation? They don't, there's the final rest. That means that there's no more need of God saying there's a rest because if you would die in Christ, death is no more, and you are now in the ultimate rest. In fact, the whole book of Hebrews chapter 4 says, there remains a rest for the people of God. Heaven is a place of perpetual rest. I'm talking about the cessation of restlessness. Did you know Americans are afflicted with restlessness? They just are like this. They can't stop. They got to be going. They got to be doing. They can't be. They have to do. God says more important than what you do is what you are. That's why it says, Worship the LORD thy God and Him serve. What comes first? Worship. Then the service that comes out of that is proper. But if we're trying to just do everything for the Lord we can, and we're not being still and knowing that He's God, we're not doing His plan. And the final rest is in 14:13.

Okay, we have Garden of Eden, which sounded pretty good in Genesis 2:8. But what do we have in Revelation 2:7? The Paradise of God. The Garden of Eden sounded pretty good, but it got messed up. Guess what? We didn't miss it. We're going to go to the Paradise of God. Remember what Jesus said to the thief on the cross? Today you'll be with me where? Paradise. That's why we know that when we die, we aren't going to Limbo, Limbus Patrum, or Limbus Infantum, or anything else that Roman Catholic scholars have thought up. We're going, when we're absent from the body, we are present with Jesus. And where is Jesus? In Paradise, in the very presence of God. In chapter 2, verse 17 of Genesis, it says, and so death started, and it says in 21:4, no death, and no dirges, and no funerals, no more death. How about this, Satan appears in 3:1, what happens to him in 20:10?

You know what? If you ever meet someone who believes in annihilation, you know what annihilation is? That means that when you die, God burns you up and you're not around anymore. You notice that this is, that the devil is thrown into that place at the beginning of the millennium. And guess what? At the end of the millennium, a thousand years later, he's still there. Isn't that interesting? He hasn't burned up yet. And that's a horrible thing to think about, that no one gets consumed by the fires of Hell. They are suffering the vengeance of eternal fire, which is a horrible thought.

The curse starts in 3:16-24. What happens in 22:3? No curse! You know what the curse are? Thorns, weeds, bunions, calluses, baldness. What did Lehman Strauss say? Vitamin B, baldness, bifocals, bridge, bulge, and bunions. Those are all part of the curse. Did you ever think that leaves didn't die? There's no death. Bugs didn't die. There weren't bugs. All those are part of the curse. All the bad stuff. Mosquitoes didn't bite. Isn't it neat to think about?

Okay, let's keep going. The city of man, man built cities in Genesis 4:17. What does Revelation 21:2 say? A city from God. Do you know what it says Abraham looked for? He looked for a city that has foundations, whose builder and maker is God. That was very significant to me when I lived in California. I used to go running out of the house every time we had an earthquake and I just loved to watch what would happen because it looked just like waves coming in. Waves would go like this across the San Fernando Valley. And I would stand, I'd always get in this one spot, and I'd watch, and you could see all of the chimneys go up and down just like that. And I used to just run there and watch and just see that wave go right through the valley. No foundations on Earth, right? But we're going to the city that…no termites, no fire, no earthquakes, no hurricanes. Lived in Rhode Island, went through hurricanes. Lived in California, went through earthquakes. Lived here, first week we're here, tornadoes, we didn't even know there was one. And the elders, some of them came driving over to rescue my family. And we were just baking cookies and having fun. And they said, don't you know there's a tornado? We said, no. The elder’s car got all banged up on the way. And he risked his life, he had to have his car repainted. We didn't even know there was a tornado. Now we know, we're afraid. Here we go, the last one. Jerusalem is first mentioned in Genesis 14:18. What do we find in 21:2? The new Jerusalem.

The facts of the Fall. God, remember, searches out the fallen ones. That means that God wants voluntary worship. He searches them out. He doesn't make them come to Him. He goes to them. He wants them to voluntarily worship Him. And that's an important theme of the Fall, that God seeks out their worship.

Secondly, God was available before the Fall, and you know what that means? That God wants personal fellowship. God wants personal fellowship from you. That's why it is an offense to Him if you don't give it to Him. Did you know that? Did you know He's waiting for you, sometime in the day, to stop and to meet with Him? It would be like, if you were married, and on your way to work, and your husband's sitting at the table, or your wife's sitting at the table, going, you go right by her. Christ, it says, behold I'm knocking, and that's for Christians, and He says, I want to commune with you. You need to fellowship with Me.

Thirdly, the promise of God, remember He says that God said this, Genesis 3:15, God wants to save us. And those are facts from the Fall. God wants, number one, worship, number two, He wants fellowship, number three, He wants to save people.

And then, the lessons from the Fall I wrote out for you, and the facts of the flood I wrote out for you, and the lessons from the flood, but what can we learn? Three things. What can we learn, number one, from the book of Genesis? That God is holy. He will judge sin. Galatians 6:7, says, Christian or unsaved person, don't be deceived. God is not mocked. If we sow to the flesh, we're going to from the flesh reap corruption. Did you know, Christians can't escape the judgment of God here on Earth for their sin? Now, I'm never going to answer to God for sin in Heaven, and I'm not going to be judged for my sin there. But if I persist in sin here, God says, I'm not mocked. If you say you're a Christian and you're living in sin, I will stop you dead in your tracks. God will judge sin. Either I confess it and forsake it and it's on Christ and I bear it no more, or if I persist in it, God will chasten me. It says in chapter 12 of Hebrews, God will make me sick and weak, it says in 1 Corinthians 11, and 1 John 5 says He will kill me. And Revelation 2 says the same thing if I don't repent of sin.

Number two, God is loving, He will seek out individuals. Luke 19:10. Individuals are important to God, and God is so loving, He wants to seek us out. If He sought you, and if He sought me out to save us, how much more does He want to seek you out tomorrow, sometime during the day? For you to get right on the other side of the mirror, and look at Him in the mirror, and say oh, is that what you look like, Lord? I need a little work there. I need a little work there. I need to scrape this off of my life. I need to paint this onto my life. You know what I mean? We get ready in the morning, don't we? You all look quite ready. Looks like you really did a good job this morning. Okay? Get ready with God every day, spend time in His Word, and He'll bless us for it.

Let's close in prayer.

Lord, we thank You that with open faces we've beheld our Lord Jesus Christ. He is the last Adam that came to put away sin by His own sacrifice. He is the second Abel, the last Abel, who's by a bloody sacrifice, as He was murdered, took care of sin. He is like Noah, because in Him we are saved from the judgment that will flood this world out of existence. He is like Joseph. He was beloved of You, O Father, and He was betrayed by His own brother, and yet He rescues us. Oh, thank You for showing us Jesus in every page of this book. Help us to love Him more, seek Him more, and look more like Him. Because of Your Word, and because we want to, in Jesus’ name. Amen.