Genesis Introduction
Intro: Genesis is the book of beginnings or origins. In it we find the only
true, sensible and reliable account of the origin of all the basic entities of the
universe and life: the origin of plants and animals, the origin of man,
marriage and family, sin, evil, suffering, death, government, culture,
languages, nations, the chosen people, worship, atonement, salvation etc.
Many of the hotly debated topics in our culture today like: atheism, moral
relativism, evolutionism, occultism, divorce, homosexuality, same sex
marriage, racism, crime and punishment, abortion, euthanasia, genetic
engineering and so forth are either directly or indirectly addressed in
Genesis. We are going to find our study in Genesis to be extremely relevant
to life in this 21st. century.
Genesis can be divided into two sections. The first section is found in
chapters 1-11 and is marked by four great events: Creation; The Fall; The
Flood and the Dispersion at the tower of Babel. The second section
beginning in chapter 12 revolves around the lives of four great men.
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph.
We are going to approach the book in somewhat of a topical fashion. By that
I mean, rather than going verse by verse through each chapter, we’ll look indepth at each of the four great events: creation, the fall, the flood, and the
dispersion at Babel. After we’ve done that, we’ll take an in-depth look at the
lives of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph.
But before we get to that first great event of creation we must begin with
God himself.
Genesis actually begins with the fact of God. There is no attempt to argue
for God’s existence, His existence is assumed. From the biblical standpoint
God’s existence is in the category of self-evident truth, and those who deny
the self-evident truth of God’s existence are considered fools.
We live in a highly charged atmosphere of skepticism regarding the
existence of God. Some speak as though science has proven there is no God.
Physicist Victor J. Stenger has even written a book entitled, God: The Failed
Hypothesis.
Browsing the bookstores at Heathrow airport I noticed these titles in the
non-fiction section. The God Delusion, God is not Great, The End of Faith.
We are experiencing an onslaught of aggressive atheism here in the West.
Let me give you an example of some of the rhetoric coming from the socalled new atheist: Physicist Steven Weinberg writes, “anything we scientist
can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done and may in the end be
our greatest contribution to civilization.” Christopher Hitchens writes, “All
religions and all churches are equally demented in their belief in divine
intervention, divine intercession, or even the existence of the divine in the
first place.” Richard Dawkins writes, “The great unmentionable evil at the
center of our culture is monotheism. From a barbaric Bronze Age text know
as the Old Testament, three anti-human religions have evolved: Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam.” With these kinds of vitriolic tirades becoming more
and more the norm in our culture, I believe that we need to equip ourselves
to respond to these types of attacks.
Therefore I thought it would be good for us to take a look again at some of
the arguments for the existence of God.
1. The Cosmological argument- This argument states in essence that the
universe is an effect which must have had a cause.
“The Law of cause and effect states that the effect cannot be greater, in size or in kind,
than the cause… No exceptions to the law of cause and effect have ever been observed. It
follows that every effect we see in the universe must have had a cause, and we can trace
all effects back to a First Cause. The first cause of time must be greater than time, in fact
eternal. The first cause of space must be greater than space, namely infinite…
The first cause of all the energy in the universe cannot be less than the sum total of that
energy, the first cause is omnipotent. By similar logic, we can consider all the
information; not just the intrinsic properties of matter, but the genetic information in all
the varied forms of animal and vegetable life and conclude that the first cause must be
omniscient, all knowing”. (Dr. David Rosevere)
2. The Teleological argument- This arguments states that where there is a
design there must be a designer, where there is purpose there must be one
who purposed it.
a. Irreducible complexity of the cell.
b. The anthropic principle.
3. The Moral argument- This argument states that there must be a God to
account for the universal sense of right and wrong among people.
4. The argument from Congruity- This arguments is based on the belief
that the postulate which best explains the related facts is probably true.
In this particular case, belief in the existence of God best explains the facts of our moral,
mental and religious nature, as well as the facts of the material universe… without this
postulate (God exist) these facts are really inexplicable.
Each of these arguments presents (in my opinion) the logical and reasonable
conclusion that must be drawn from the observable evidence. But when it
comes to atheist we are not dealing with rational, reasonable people.
Listen to Dawkins,
“The world is divided into things that look as though somebody designed them (wings
and wagon wheels, hearts and televisions), and things that just happened through the
unintended workings of physics (mountains and rivers, sand dunes and solar systems).
Charles Darwin discovered a way in which the unaided laws of physics- the laws
according to which things “just happen” – could, in the fullness of geologic time, come to
mimic deliberate design. The illusion of design is so successful that to this day most
Americans (including, significantly, many influential and rich Americans) stubbornly
refuse to believe it is an illusion.”
In an interview with Ben Stein, Dawkins conceded that there could possibly be an
intelligent designer behind creation but insisted that the designer would be an extraterrestrial rather than God as revealed in the Bible.
Richard Dawkins and the New Atheist are men who are in reality intellectually dishonest.
They hide behind their scientific degrees but their real reasons for denying the existence
of God are moral. At the end of the day they simply do not want a God to whom they
must give an account.
Anthony Flew, the world’s foremost atheistic philosopher for more than fifty years
recently wrote a book entitled: There is a God. Subtitled: How the worlds most notorious
atheist changed his mind.
“Science cannot furnish an argument for God’s existence. But… the laws of nature, life
with its teleological organization, and the existence of the universe – can only be
explained in the light of an Intelligence that explains both its own existence and that of
the world… How, it might be asked, do I as a person respond to the discovery of an
ultimate reality that is an omnipresent and omniscient Spirit? I must say again that my
journey to my discovery of the Divine has thus far been a pilgrimage of reason. I have
followed the argument where it has led me. And it has led me to accept the existence of a
self-existent, immutable, immaterial, omnipotent, and omniscient Being. Where do I go
from here? In the first place, I am entirely open to learning more about the divine reality,
especially in the light of what we know about the history of nature. Second, the question
of whether the Divine has revealed itself in human history remains a valid topic of
discussion. You cannot limit the possibilities of omnipotence except to produce the
logically impossible. Everything else is open to omnipotence. With particular reference to
the Christian claim that God became man in the person of Jesus Christ, as I have said
more than once, no other religion enjoys anything like the combination of a charismatic
figure like Jesus and a first-class intellectual like Paul. If you’re wanting omnipotence to
set up a religion, it seems to me that this is the one to beat!”
Close: In the final analysis, the greatest argument for the existence of God is
Jesus Christ.
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by
Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible
and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All
things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things,
and in Him all things consist.