Video Transcript: Primeval History

We're back for the second lecture in our course. And this is beginning of Part  One, an overview of the redemptive historical story of the Old Testament. We're  talking about beginnings. And the first part of that those beginnings are called  primeval history. That's what the first 11 chapters of Genesis deal with primeval  history. Here we have God's revelation of the beginnings of the world and  humankind. It's a story that all the biblical authors as well as Jesus himself  regarded as authentic and very important. The main question that the opening  chapters of Genesis address is, where does this world and populations of things and plants and animals and peoples come from. All the other religions of the  ancient world believed their gods had something to do with it, but their gods  were themselves part of the cosmos animals, heavenly bodies, mythical  creatures, or some variety of super humans. These religions told stories of how  the gods were born and how they quarreled. They alleged that the birth of the  universe coincided with their battles love affairs, and reproduction. The Bible,  however, makes a unique claim the world and all that is in it is God's creation.  It's his project. Genesis 1:1 starts off. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, in verse 2 talks about the involvement of the Spirit of God. And  Colossians 1:16, tells us speaking of Christ, all things were created by Him and  for Him. So everything that exists came from God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  God alone stands distinct from and outside of the universe, he existed before it,  and he created it all. There's nothing that does not owe its existence to him, he's the one in charge. And He alone has the authority and power to define the  natures and roles of what he brings into existence. The heavens, the earth,  including sea and dry land, and everything that populates it. Both living and  nonliving creatures. All is a testimony to the power and authority of the Triune  God. What's more, God created everything out of nothing. What is it nothing  look like before God created everything out of it. It didn't look like anything. It  was just nothing. For us creativity is rearranging the stuff God is made putting  them together in different ways. For God, creation is making it all out of nothing.  This necessarily takes us beyond the limits of scientific understanding, which  can only explain more or less how the world works and not how it began. God  built order into his creation, seasons and days and years, and living creatures  that reproduced as the Bible tells us according to their kinds, the order was not  an accident. It was intentional by design. And when he finished each stage of  His work of creation, God saw that it was good. This goodness was specifically  connected to Adam and Eve and in Genesis 2:25. The man and his wife were  both naked, and they felt no shame. This speaks of much more than their ease  with physical nakedness. This signifies that there were no barriers in their  relationship with God or with each other. There was no hesitancy, no guilt, and  no shame. It may sound uncontroversial to say that creation is good, but some  of the most destructive false teaching in the history of the world has revolved  around the idea of the Creation not being good, but evil. It is not so the world in 

the things in it are not inherently evil. They only become evil if people put them  to bad use or if we begin to worship them, rather than their Creator. This good  original state becomes very important in the rest of the Bible is a condition to  which mankind and all of creation longs to return and more than that, as a  condition to which God was arranging for his creation to return. The goodness of God's creation is is displayed Moreover, in lawful order, and the created  hierarchy of things, not everything is equal, or on the same level. Plants are food for animals, and people and both plants and animals are subject to the use and  management of the crown of God's creation, humankind who serve God by their stewardship. The order of creation also comes through although Genesis 1  doesn't speak of it in the orderly development of culture, the whole idea of  government presupposes order, lawlessness, government and morality,  lawfulness, excuse me, government and morality is order, while criminality,  anarchy, and immorality is disorder. And today, when we witness the breakdown  of order in so many sectors of our culture, it's precisely because so many have  rejected the God, of whom Genesis 1 testifies. In fact, those silly pagan religions whom some may have thought we outgrew with the advent of modern and non  superstitious civilization, they're coming back. Some today don't just idly talk  about Mother Earth, they worship her. In Hinduism, exports to the world. It's  pagan ideas that a spark of the divine permeates all things. And so that perverse Hindu notion that a fly or cow has just as much right to existence as a human  being also finds proponents in civilized American society under the umbrella of  the radical animal rights movement. But the biblical truth is that God has given  ruling authority to humankind who alone of all God's creatures are created in the image of God. We, like God have a personality, mind wills, emotions. God thinks we think God decides we decide God feels we feel. We're also moral beings we  know right from wrong. When Adam and Eve sinned, they immediately felt  shame. We are spiritual beings too created with the ability to relate to God in a  unique way. Now, another truth about creation, God finished the job. That  doesn't mean there's no change in the universe or that God has ceased his daily care and oversight, but it means that his creation is complete. The universe is  not some vast, Unfinished Symphony not a work in progress. It's a finished work of creation that has been marred by the presence of sin. What this means is that there is no utopia toward which we are evolving, but an original created  relationship with God, toward which we are being restored. After giving us the  account of the beginnings of our world, the primeval biblical story moves on to  tell us the story of how sin and death entered God's good creation, from the  beginning God set up boundaries for Adam and Eve, in one breath, God gave  them a permission and a prohibition. Genesis 2:16-17, God says, eat from any  tree in the garden, including the tree of life. And then verse 9, says that, but then it says, Do not eat from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Both from  the context and from other scripture references we may understand that the tree

of life in the garden represented communion with God, the inexhaustible source  of life. By eating from the Tree of Life, Adam and Eve would show that they  agreed with the divine order of things in which the Creator alone had the right to  decide how things would be, they would show their understanding, furthermore,  that they needed to live in constant dependence on him. If on the other hand,  Adam and Eve ate from the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil,  they would be denying their complete and utter dependence on God. To do such a thing would show ingratitude to God and rebellion against him against his  provision against being dependent on and accountable to him. And that would  result in death and the destruction of paradise. But rebellion is precisely what  the serpent tempted Eve to engage in. He told her that she would not die, and  that God was trying to hide something from her. She could be just like God, the  serpent continued in the knowledge of good and evil and the ability to live  independently of God. Eve thought that sounded good, and went to Adam with  the possibility and it sounded good to him too. And together they ate, their  disobedience was deliberate and Paradise was lost. And with it, their freedom to live as the little lower than Angel creatures that God had created them to be. You see, human freedom is always defined by boundaries, Adam and Eve's freedom  and that of all People, for all time is defined by the boundaries of dependence  upon God, you might compare Adam and Eve's situation with fish in an  aquarium. Perhaps you can imagine seeing the world from the perspective of  fish in a, in a bowl, it looks at the much bigger world of your living room and  thinks I want to be free to live out there. And so one day it jumps out of the tank  and of course falls on the floor, unable to move around in his new environment  and unable to breathe. And if it's not put back in his watery home, it dies. The  fish can only be free in water in similarly, you and I can be free only as we live in a dependent relationship with God without that we die. Adam and Eve's rebellion should have meant instant death or even what we might call uncreation, a  reversion to the nothingness before the beginning of creation. But by God's  grace, it didn't. Life continued. Even though paradise was lost, it was an act of  grace that God searched out Adam and Eve, who were unsuccessfully trying to  hide. He told them of the pain and distress they would experience from now on.  But he also made a promise of better things for the future. God also had a  message for them and for the serpent to Genesis 3:15, a very important text in  Scripture, Genesis 3:15, and I will put enmity between you and the woman,  between your offspring and hers, He will crush your head, and you will strike his  heel. This was a first promise of God for one would redeem people from sin and  its effects and effects to restoring his very good creation. Immediately after the  fall, people began to offer sacrifices to the Lord. No doubt God had ordered the  sacrifices. Although the Bible doesn't tell us about it. God had ordered the  sacrifices for the purpose of keeping before humanity both the terrible reality of  sin and the wonderful promise of future redemption. Now two of Adam's sons, 

Cain and Abel, brought their sacrifices to God, Genesis 4:3-4. It tells us that in  the course of time, Cain brought some of the fruits of his soul soil as an offering  to the Lord. But Abel brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock.  Next Scripture tells us that Abel's offering was accepted while Cain's was  rejected. Why the difference? It's because when God looked at Cain, he saw a  person pretending to worship, he saw a person trying to build a credit with him,  by giving him something besides himself. Cain's sacrifice was not from the  heart, as he himself knew, because God told him if, if you do what is right, will  you not be accepted? In other words, if you bring the kind of sacrifice, you know, I want you too will enjoy my favor. I cannot emphasize this too strongly. For this  is just the first of many times that the Bible makes this point. God doesn't give a  hoot about the good things you do. If they come from some other place, than a  heart that genuinely loves him. You cannot fool God, with acts of worship that  are not real. Real worship comes only when you give God yourself as as Abel  did. And Hebrews 11:4 speaks of this difference calling Abel's sacrifice, one of  faith, a gift of faith, it says, By faith, Abel offered God a better sacrifice and Cain  did. By faith. He was commended as a righteous man when God spoke well, of  his offering. You see, Abel had learned from the sin of his parents. He had  learned that you live by the grace of God and you owe him everything you have  most of all yourself. Abel was what he was because he focused on the Creator  God and when he saw God, he submitted to him, laying his heart on the altar. I  suppose that to any casual bystander Cain would have appeared to be doing  the same thing, but God knew. God knew that his heart was false. Cain  apparently had not learned from the sin of his parents says was further  demonstrated by the murderous anger he showed against his brother, Abel. And this murder gave rise to the biggest crisis after the fall. How would God make his promise for victorious offspring from Genesis 3:15? How would he make that  come true with the death of the good son But God who is never short of answers gave an answer here too in the gift of another son for Adam and Eve, Seth. But  in the war between as a war between good and evil continued Cain's  descendants proved to be as godless as their ancestor. Some of them were  quite talented, but their spirit is captured in the boast of Cain's fifth generation  descendant, Lamech, Genesis 4:23-24. Lamech says, I have killed a man for  wounding me, a young man forinjuring me, Cain, if Cain is avenged seven  times, then Lamech 77 times. In contrast, Seth became the head of a line who  called on the name of the Lord. However, through the years wickedness and  violence increased in the earth until, with the exception of Noah and his family,  the Bible says, in Genesis 6:7-8, the Lord was grieved that he had made a man  on the earth, and his full heart was filled with pain. And so the Lord said, I will  wipe mankind who I've created from the face of the earth, men and animals and  creatures that move along the ground and birds of the air, for I am grieved, that  I've made them, but Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord, and then follows 

the account of the flood God's judgment on an evil world. It's a story of both  judgment and salvation. Let's look at those two aspects of it as to judgment. It  reaffirms these truths seen in the earlier seasons of primeval history and  reiterated throughout the whole Bible. Number one, God hates wickedness  rebellion against himself, and he does not take it lightly when his intentions are  disregarded. And since he created the world and its inhabitants, he has the right  to judge it, for its rebellion. Two God will not yield his will to the desires of those  who rebel against him. People often change their minds, especially in the face of opposition. God never does, but always remains committed to his perfect plans,  and intentions. Three, God is able to have his way, what he created, he can just  as easily uncreate He who brought order from chaos can just as easily turn  order back into chaos. However, point four God does not rush to judgment, but  always provides opportunity to refer repentance. As grieved as God was by  Noah's generation. He graciously postponed judgment for a time, while Noah  preached whom the New Testament calls our preacher of righteousness, for  each judgment, preached God's will. And finally, God means for this and every  judgment of his stand is a warning for future generations until the date of final  judgment. So those are the things this the flood story teaches us about  judgment. But the floor flood is also a story of salvation. In fact, it teaches us a  lot about the even fuller salvation that has come through Jesus Christ notice  several things one, the saving from death of Noah and his family along with the  animals was at God's initiative in by His Grace, God came to Noah to instruct  him how to escape the coming judgment. Second, salvation always comes as  God's answer to extreme need in the midst of judgment. It's not even necessary  in any other context. Third point about salvation. It's not just the snatching of  individuals from destruction, but it's a reestablishment of certain people into  something like the original community that God intended his image bearers to  be. fourth another aspect of, of salvation, at least in its ultimate sense is its  enduring quality. It's the enjoyment of God's unending Grace after the flood, and  while receiving Noah's thankful sacrifice, God promised he'd never again  destroy all living creatures as he had done in the flood. And fifth, notice finally,  that the grace that God showed to Noah was intended to be passed on to the  generations who followed, God repeated to Noah the very mandate he had  given long before to Adam and Eve, He said, Be fruitful and increase in number  and fill the earth. Mankind got another chance to live in God's world the way  God intended. And similarly, the salvation by which God has blessed you and  me is also meant through us to bless both brothers and sisters in Christ, and  those who have yet to come to personally know the saving power of Christ. After the flood, it soon became clear that sinfulness was still in the human heart. One  of Noah's sons Dishonored his father, and received a curse of God for it. And  after several generations and descendants of Noah seemed to have largely  forgotten the command of God to be a steward throughout the whole earth and 

instead made plans to do precisely the opposite. To make a name for  themselves, Genesis 11:4 tells us and not be scattered over the face of the  whole earth. And talking about the building of the tower of Babel, in defiance of  God, they thought they can establish a worldwide empire that would be  independent of God. In fact, Genesis 11 is very similar to Genesis 3. In Eden,  Adam and Eve had tried to construct their own reality without God. Now in the  post flood world, the community erected a tower in a culture to similarly proclaim the independence of the human race. But it didn't work any better here that it  worked for Adam and Eve God's so hindered their efforts that they gave up in  frustration, and were forced to obey the divine command to fill the earth they  scattered. The story then serves as a constant reminder to us that life is never  about us building our own kingdoms, but about participating in God's eternal  kingdom. And that brings us through the first 11 chapters of Genesis to the end  of the primeval era. God prevails in the end, and yet it seems that God's  reclamation of a sinned damaged world is kind of stalled. But God is just getting  started, as we'll see in the next lecture. The patriarchs.