The book of Genesis.
Genesis 1:1:
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Genesis 1:26-27:
And God said, Let us make man in Our image, after Our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the heavens, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
And God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them.
Let us look to the Lord.
Dear heavenly Father, we do thank Thee for giving us Thy beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. And we do thank Thee for giving us Thy Word, Thy precious Word. We thank Thee for giving us Thy Holy Spirit, that through Thy Holy Spirit we may understand Thy Word and see Thy Son, our Lord Jesus.
O our Father, how we praise and thank Thee, because this is Thy will: that we shall see Thy beloved Son—not only see Him, but be transformed and conformed to His image. O Father, we do thank Thee for all Thy mercy and grace, Thy purpose, Thy plan. We do worship Thee.
We ask Thee to open Thy Word to us this morning, that it may be life and spirit to us. And to Thee be the glory, in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
When we open the Bible, the first book before us is the book of Genesis.
Though, in the antiquity of the books of the Bible, Genesis may not be the first book written—possibly, probably, the book of Job was written before this book of Genesis, because Job is a book probably written during the age of the patriarchs, and we know Genesis was written in the Mosaic age.
But even so, it is most appropriate to find Genesis listed at the beginning of the Bible. Why? Because it is Genesis.
Now, the title of the book comes from the Hebrew word. In the Hebrew Bible, this is the first word there. Therefore, we call this book Genesis, which in Greek means origin. This is a book of beginnings.
And immediately you can see, through the title of this book, the scope and the limit of this book. It is a book of beginnings, a book of origins. It is the seed plot of the Bible. Here you will find the germ of every truth, every subject, in the Bible being planted there. And these seeds will be developed throughout the whole book of the Bible.
But it deals only with the beginnings. It tells us of the beginning of creation—of course, except the beginning of God, because God is the beginning. It tells us of the beginning of creation, the beginning of Sabbath, the beginning of man, the beginning of life, the beginning of sin, the beginning of redemption, the beginning of family, the beginning of nation and race. It tells us the beginning of everything.
But remember, it is just the beginning. It does not deal with the end, with the result, with the final. Because we find that it is a book of beginnings. It begins, and you have to see how all these beginnings will be developed through the whole Bible until you come to the book of Revelation. Then you will see the final, the end, the result.
The book of Genesis is just one of the five-volume books called the Pentateuch.
It gives us primitive history, as well as the history of the patriarchs. The primitive history begins from creation to the fall of man, from the fall of man to the flood, and from the flood to the tower of Babel. That is primitive history.
And then after that, Genesis gives us the history of the patriarchs: the story of Abraham, the story of Isaac, the story of Jacob, and the story of Joseph.
Both the Jewish and the Christian traditions agree that this book of Genesis, or the book of the Pentateuch, was written by Moses.
The Talmud tells us that Moses wrote this book, the Pentateuch, except the last eight verses. The last eight verses were written by Joshua, and I think it is evident because those last eight verses tell of the death of Moses.
Now, how did Moses compose this book of Genesis?
He compiled this book of Genesis under the power of the Holy Spirit—holy men moved by the Spirit of God.
Partly by direct revelation from God. Why? Because he gave the story of creation. Now, of course, nobody was there, and nobody could tell Moses about it. So evidently, he received, say for instance, the story of creation through direct revelation from God.
And then partly from probably oral traditions, because we know the patriarchs, the fathers, lived very long lives—not like us. They lived hundreds and hundreds of years old. Therefore, you find they were able to pass on what had transpired in their lifetime to the other generation, and on and on.
So probably Moses was able to compile this book through oral traditions among the people. But anyway, we find that he was the most fitting vessel, instrument, to write this book of Genesis.
Why? Because on the one hand, you find he was a very learned man. He learned all the learning of Egypt, and Egypt at that time was the greatest nation in the world. The civilization of Egypt was at its peak.
But on the other hand, you find he was one who was greatly disciplined by God. He knew the discipline of the Lord through twice forty years. So, on the one hand, there is great learning; on the other hand, there is deep discipline. And when you put these things together, you find a suitable vessel used by God to give us this tremendous book of Genesis.
Most likely, Moses wrote this book of Genesis around the year 1500 BC. And what he wrote covered roughly a period of two thousand years, from the story of creation to the death of Joseph.
Now, there are many ways to approach this book of Genesis. You can approach this book historically, or prophetically, or dispensationally, or typologically, or spiritually. There are different approaches to this book of Genesis.
But what we would like to do is approach this book biographically.
Now, before we go into this book of Genesis, probably it will be helpful for us to have a general idea of the five books of Moses, the Pentateuch—what they are about.
Let me just put it out very simply:
I think probably that will help us to remember.
Now we come to this book of Genesis. Genesis is a book of beginning, origin. And whenever you think of beginning or origin, immediately it is associated with purpose and will.
You know, our God is the God of beginnings. He is the beginning. He is also the God of purpose, the supreme will in the universe.
God is not like man. We sometimes do things without thinking. We sometimes do things by accident. But God is never like that. He is the supreme will. He is a God of purpose.
Whatever He does, He has already had His mind made up, His purpose decided. And then He will lay down a plan, and He will work accordingly until it is accomplished. This is our God.
To use the word of Paul in Ephesians 1:5, he said, “According to the good pleasure of His will.” You know, whatever God does, He does it according to the good pleasure of His will.
There is His will, and His will is not influenced by anybody. His will is according to His good pleasure. That is the way that pleases Him; that is the way that He likes it to be. And because He likes it to be that way, so He decides that it shall be this way.
Everything is done according to the good pleasure of His will. And out of the good pleasure of this will, He begins everything. He begins to lay out everything until finally you find everything gathered together, summed up in His will.
So it is important for us to see: what is His will? What is His purpose? At the very beginning. Because if we do not know what His will is, then we will not be able to understand what He is doing. And that is the reason why you find people do not understand what God is doing: because they do not know His will.
If you know what His will is, that explains everything. So first of all, we must know what His will is, and that is what the book of Genesis is: the will of God.
Now, what is God’s will? What is God’s supreme will—His overall, ultimate, all-inclusive will? I think it is evident: the will of God is nothing but His beloved Son. That is His will.
Of course, it is in relation to mankind. That is true. What is in God’s mind is His beloved Son.
He sees a man, a perfect man, a man of His own heart. And He is working out that man in many men.
On the one hand, He reveals that Man, His beloved Son, to mankind. You know, that by the Spirit He may work that Man into many men, until the many men are conformed to this one Man, that the Son may lead many sons into glory.
God is looking for the man—a universal man, a man patterned after the perfect Man. And the perfect Man, in a sense, becomes a corporate man to embrace many, many men with Him. And this is the will of God.
Well, you can find that expression, say, in Romans 5: one and many. There is the one, and there are the many. But the many came from that one, and the many will return to that one. They join together to that one, and that becomes the one new man. So this is the will of God.
And it is for this reason you find Genesis is a book of biographies. That is to say, God is not interested in methods. God is not interested in theories. He is not interested in theology either. He is interested in man.
So you find the first book of the Bible is a book of biography. You have the biographies of eight persons: Adam, Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph.
Now, of course, there are many other names you find mentioned in the book of Genesis. But these names are just mentioned, and then they pass out into oblivion. Why?
Only those names that are intertwined with the Man, with the beloved Son—whose lives are intertwined and related with the Man of God’s heart—you find that their story is told.
You know, we often say, “What is history? History is His story.” I believe you must have heard that. History is His story. Now, whose story? Of course, we know His story is the story of nobody else but our Lord Jesus. History is His story.
Therefore, you find both in the primitive history and in the patriarchal history, it is but the history of the story of our Lord Jesus. We can see our Lord Jesus in these lives, as God works the life of our Lord Jesus, as it were, into these lives.
And when you take these eight people together, you see Christ. In each one of these lives, you see a little glimpse, a little bit of Christ. And when you put them together, you have the full picture of His story. So this is what the book of Genesis is all about.
We will briefly go through the history of these eight persons.
Adam. Adam means red earth, because God used the red earth to form the body of a man. But even though he was formed of red earth, yet he was created in God’s image.
In the whole creation, of all the created beings, man is the only creature that is created in God’s image. Think of that. Not even the angels—man.
God breathed the breath of life into the nostrils of this one formed of red earth, and man became a living soul.
There is something in man that corresponds and responds to God. Man is made for God in a special way.
You know, that is the reason why Saint Augustine says, “My soul can never enter into rest until it rests in Thee, O God.”
Man is specially made. He is made in the image of God. He is made in such a way that without God, he is empty; without God, he is unfulfilled; without God, he is incomplete. He is like a vessel to contain God, God’s life, within him. And that is the way that man is created.
And of this created man, God gave him dominion over the fowls of the air, the beasts of the field, the fishes of the sea—to rule the whole earth on behalf of God.
When man was created, he was created perfect. He had a spirit, a soul, and a body. He had five senses complete, all the members of the body complete. He had all the faculties of his soul.
Being a living soul, he could think, he could feel, he could decide, he could choose. And he had a spirit that could commune with God, to know God, and even to possess God and to be fully possessed by God.
So when man was created, he was created perfect, and yet he needed to be perfected. How do we know that?
Because we find that after God created man, He put man in the garden of Eden. And the garden of Eden means the garden of pleasure. It means pleasure. God wants man to enjoy His created things.
And God wants man to guard, to till, and to have dominion over His created things. But on one condition, and that condition is: man needs to be perfected.
So He put man before two trees: the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
It is as if God said, “You are created perfect. But if you want to enjoy everything that I have created, and if you want to have dominion over all things on My behalf as My governor, well, you need to eat the fruit of the tree of life. You need My life.”
“Only after you possess My life, and My life possesses you, then you will be able to enjoy everything that I have made, and you will be able to rule over all things that I have created.”
“But there is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you eat of that tree, it is true that your soul life will be greatly developed. You gain a knowledge of good and evil outside of God, outside of life, just by reasoning, rationalization.”
“You will be able to distinguish good and evil—not distinguish good and evil by life, but distinguish good and evil by rationalization, by reasoning it out. You will have that power. But then you declare independence from Me. You want to make a god of yourself, and the result will be death.”
“You will not be able to enjoy the things I have created, nor will you be able to rule over the created things.”
Unfortunately, our forefathers, Adam and Eve, took of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil instead of the tree of life. In other words, they would rather be independent than dependent upon God, rather be on their own than be in union with God in life.
And we know the result: sin entered into the world, and death, the wages of sin.
But thank God, God gave man a second chance.
One day we see One who bore our sins in His body on the tree, in order that, being dead to sins, we are made alive unto righteousness: 1 Peter 2:24.
In other words, you find our forefathers missed the tree of life. But thank God, when our Lord Jesus Christ was crucified on Calvary’s cross, the cross is none other but a tree.
You know, nobody will put a robber on the cross by smoothing it and even painting it, all gold-plated. Nobody will do that. They just cut down a tree and hang him there. So when our Lord Jesus was crucified on the tree, He was crucified on the tree. That is what the Bible says.
And out of that tree comes life to us. So when we believe in the Lord Jesus, thank God, we have eaten of the tree of life. God’s life is in us, and we allow that life to rule over us.
Then you find we will be enabled to have dominion as well as enjoyment. Otherwise, dear brothers and sisters, without the life of God, there is no enjoyment.
Every enjoyment in this world carries with it a sorrow. But only when you enjoy everything in the life of God is it real enjoyment. And there is dominion. That is Adam.
Abel. Abel means breath or vanity.
Adam gave this child the name Abel. Why? Because when they had their firstborn, Cain, they said, “We have acquired a man from the Lord,” because Cain means acquisition. They thought that in Cain they had the promised seed of the woman. But what a letdown it was.
So when Abel was born, they called that son Abel—a breath. You know, there is only one breath between us and death.
And everything under the earth is vanity. The Preacher tells us that. Solomon tells us, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity, under the sun.” Everything is vanity. How true it is.
And because Abel realized this, he realized that he was but a breath. There was only one breath between him and death. And he knew that man, in himself, cannot enjoy anything. Anything is vanity; it all results in vanity.
And therefore, he sacrificed a better sacrifice. He acknowledged sin. He trusted in the atoning blood of the Lamb. And because he offered a better sacrifice, he was accepted by God.
Dear brothers and sisters, it is true with us today. We need to see that there is only one breath between us and death. Life is so short, so uncertain, so quick.
And even when we have that breath, everything is vanity of vanities. Will that not stir our hearts up to acknowledge our sins, to humble ourselves before God, to accept God’s prepared Lamb?
Behold, the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world.
And if we do, not because we are better than anybody else, it is because of the better sacrifice that we are accepted by God. We are accepted in the Beloved. That is the story of Abel.
Enoch. Enoch means disciplined or devoted.
When he was sixty-five years old, he begot a child. And evidently something happened at that moment: a revelation was given to him. And the revelation was that at the death of this child, something tremendously disastrous, a catastrophe, would happen to this world.
And because of this revelation, he by faith walked with God three hundred years.
Do you like to walk with God? Probably you like God to walk with you.
To walk with God needs discipline. Oh, it requires lots of discipline to walk with God. Unless you are fully devoted to Him, you will not be able to walk with Him, say, for a day—not to say three hundred years.
But Enoch walked with God three hundred years, steadily walking—walk and walk until he found himself in heaven.
He was not, for God took him. By faith. And before he was taken, he had the testimony that he pleased God.
And we do thank God that Methuselah lived nine hundred sixty-nine years of age, the longest life ever lived upon this earth. I often say, in China, according to our legend, the longest one who lived was Panzu, and he lived for eight hundred years. But he is not like Methuselah. Methuselah lived for nine hundred sixty-nine years.
Oh, and why? It is the mercy of God. God was patient with mankind, because at the death of Methuselah, we know came the flood.
So, brothers and sisters, here you find a man who walked with God for three hundred years, accepting the discipline of the Lord, devoted himself to God. And because of that, he was raptured; he was taken. Heaven is his reward.
If we walk with God, if we suffer with Him, we shall also be glorified with Him.
Noah. Noah means repose.
Because when he was born, his father Lamech said, “Through this son, we will have rest from our works, from the toil of our hands, because the earth is cursed by God.”
And here you find with Noah, the most prominent thing in his life is building the ark. Noah’s ark—everybody knows that. He built the ark.
And it is because of the ark that he was hidden. He and his family were hidden in the ark. So when the flood came, when the judgment of this world came, he was preserved.
And after the flood was over, he came out to a new earth, and he became the heir of the righteousness according to faith.
I think the picture that is before us is Noah and the family in the ark. And it simply means this: abiding in Christ.
Christ is the ark, and we need to abide in Christ. If we abide in Christ, then when the world is condemned and judged, we will not be judged; but instead, we will be the heirs of righteousness.
That is to say, we will inherit the coming kingdom, which is ruled by righteousness. So how important it is that we learn to abide in Christ.
The Lord Jesus, in John 15, says:
I am the vine, ye are the branches. Abide in Me, and I in you.
And ye shall bear much fruit, and the Father shall be glorified.
Now, abide simply means make home in. Make our home in Christ. Do not visit Christ once a day, or once a month, or once a week on Sunday. Do not visit Him, but make Him your home. Stay there. Stay there.
And if you stay in Him, then you will not be condemned with the world that is under judgment. On the contrary, you shall inherit righteousness—the kingdom.
Abraham. Abraham means the father of a multitude.
In Abraham’s life, you find he built a number of altars. Now, nobody will build an altar for himself. An altar is a sign of spiritual life. Why? Because one builds an altar in order to worship God, to call upon the name of the Lord.
So you find in Abraham a spiritual life, a life with God. God called him out of Ur of the Chaldees. God called him to Canaan. To be more accurate, God called him to Himself. And by faith, he obeyed God.
So here you find in this man a spiritual life. Now, what is spiritual life? Spiritual life is a life with God. That is spiritual life.
You know, you do not measure spiritual life by how much you know, even of the Bible. You measure spiritual life by how much you experience God, how much God has you as His friend. That is spiritual life.
Now, in the Old Testament, you find altar; in the New Testament, you find the cross, because the Old Testament altar is the New Testament cross.
In Hebrews 13, you find that we have an altar. And when the writer of Hebrews says, “We have an altar,” he does not mean the altar in the temple in Jerusalem, where they offer burnt offerings. He means the cross that stands outside the gate of Jerusalem, where Christ was crucified.
The cross and Christ are inseparable. And because of this, you find the cross becomes the trademark of Christians.
You cannot have a Christ without the cross. A crossless Christ is no Christ. He cannot save us.
In the same way, how can a Christian be truly a Christian? Now, I am speaking of experience, not of position. How can you be a real Christian experientially if there is no mark of the cross in your life—if there are no wounds, no marks of the cross in your life?
That means you have never been dealt with. That means you remain as you were before, a man of the flesh, a carnal man. Even though you have the life of Christ in you, you are a carnal man. You need a cross to deal with you in order to make you a spiritual man, living a spiritual life.
Now, in the lifetime of Abraham, he built four altars. He built the first altar in Shechem. It is the altar of revelation, because there God appeared to him and said, “Unto thy seed will I give this land.”
Then he built a second altar between Ai and Bethel, and called upon the name of the Lord. It is the altar of separation. He put Ai behind him, and he had Bethel before him.
Ai means a heap of ruin. The world is just a heap of ruin—leave it behind. And he faced, marching toward Bethel. Bethel, the house of God, shall be his home. It is the altar of separation.
And then he built a third altar in Hebron. Hebron means communion. After he was separated from Lot, there you find in Hebron he was in constant communion with God.
And finally, he built an altar on Mount Moriah, where he offered his son Isaac. It is the altar of worship.
Now, brothers and sisters, it is the cross that gives us revelation. Without the cross, there is no revelation. It is the cross that separates us from the world and unto the church.
It is the cross that enables us to have that fellowship, unceasing fellowship, with God. And it is the cross that stirs our worship unto God.
The cross—how we need the cross to be a symbol of our Christian life. Not something hanging on your neck, but something that is wrought into your very life.
Isaac. Isaac means laughter.
He is the son. He inherits everything from his father, but he increases what he has inherited. You find that his life is related with digging wells. He is always digging wells.
Of course, he is a farmer, a cattle raiser; he needs water. That is true. But spiritually there is a meaning to it. Water in the Scripture speaks of the living water of life, the Spirit of life, God’s life.
The Spirit of life is living, ever flowing, ever bubbling, ever refreshing, never ceasing. You know, here you find Isaac dug wells.
Now, what is a well? A well is to contain the water. So a well in the Scripture speaks of the capacity, the measure, to contain the life of God.
Brothers and sisters, we all have the life of God in us.
In John 4, you find the Lord said to that Samaritan woman, “If you drink of the water that I give to you, it will become a fountain within you. It will spring up without ceasing.” So thank God, we have a fountain within us. But we need to dig wells to contain that fountain, to keep that water.
And you know, a well is something you have to dig. The more wells you dig, the more water you have.
How we need to see the Holy Spirit working in our lives, digging and digging and digging in us, taking off the dirt and the dust in our lives. You know, we have much rubbish in us.
And this rubbish needs to be dug out, to be emptied. You know, all that rubbish of myself—my opinion, my thought, my concern, my interest, my influence, my right—you know, all this rubbish.
We are full of ourselves, all this rubbish within us, and that, in a sense, stops the water. The water is there. It is a living fountain. It is a living river. It is there, but it is stopped. We need to dig it—dig it, dig it.
And as the Holy Spirit begins working in our lives, and we cooperate with the Holy Spirit and let Him dig, you know, it seems that the more He digs, the less you are. But thank God, the more filled you are with the living water, filled with the Holy Spirit.
That is life—abundant life. And that is laughter. You get a real laugh at that, and God laughs too. He is happy.
Jacob: the twister, the supplanter, the heel-holder. And yet God changed his name into Israel, a prince of God.
In his life, you find how God worked in his life through many dealings. He dealt with others, and others dealt with him, and God was dealing with him all the time, and he was dealing with God all the time.
He was a person who wrestled with the angel at Peniel. He prevailed by being defeated.
Is that not a picture of what we are? How we deal with other people, and other people deal with us, you know; and how we deal with God, and God deals with us.
And oftentimes we find we are so strong that even we prevail over the angel of God. But by prevailing over him, we are crippled.
We see God face to face, and we are transformed. Therefore, throughout his life, you find he always raised pillars. He raised one pillar after another pillar, one pillar after another pillar. And we know a pillar in the Scripture stands for testimony.
What is our testimony? Our testimony is the result of the spiritual dealings of God in our lives. If you do not allow God to deal with your life, you have no testimony.
The more you allow God to deal with your life, the more testimony you have to this world. Because it is not to testify of what you are; it is to testify of what He is—the testimony of Jesus. He has entrusted it to us today.
And then you find Joseph. He means, “He will add.”
In Joseph’s life, you find it is, on the one hand, suffering. He suffers not because he is bad. He suffers because he has vision, and he is good. He fears God.
But when he suffers, you do not even need to wait until you finish suffering and then have the crown or the throne. You find that in the time of his suffering, there is a throne there.
In his home, he suffered from his brothers, but you know, he was on top of it. In the house of Potiphar, he suffered as a slave, but he was in charge. In the prison, he suffered as a prisoner, but he was put in full charge of the prisoners.
And of course, finally, after he had suffered enough, matured—suffering unto maturity—then you find he was qualified to sit next to Pharaoh.
Throne life. Brothers and sisters, the life that we receive from our Lord Jesus is not only abundant life; it is throne life.
In other words, wherever we are, and whatever circumstances we may be in, remember: we are not supposed to be under; we are to be above. Not because we are strong in will, but because we have the strong life within us.
In charge. Dominion. And enjoyment.
Now, so you see in these eight persons, in each of them you see a bit of Christ there. In Adam, you see the tree of life. In Abel, you see the sacrifice, that better sacrifice. In Enoch, you see heaven. In Noah, you see the ark.
In Abraham, you see the altar. In Isaac, you see the water, the well. In Jacob, you see the pillar. And in Joseph, you see the throne.
And Christ is the tree of life. He is the better sacrifice. He is heaven. What is heaven? Christ.
Well, Christ is there—there is heaven. If you are with Christ, you are in heaven. Heaven can be nothing better than the very presence of Christ.
Some people may want to walk on a golden street, but a golden street may be too hard, is it not, to walk on? But in Jesus Christ, thank God, that is perfect.
He is the altar, the cross—the cross of Jesus Christ. He is the water of the well. He is the testimony of that pillar. And He is our throne. Christ is everything.
So you find that God is working Christ, the Man of His own heart, into these men. And every man is able to absorb, as it were, something of Christ, and that becomes the main thing in his life.
Or, to put it another way, that is the meaning of their very life. Without Christ, there is no meaning to your life. But if you have Christ in you, and a little bit of Christ being constituted, being wrought in you, that gives the meaning of life to you. And that is eternal; it will never pass away.
And brothers and sisters, God is still working that out today with you and me. The biographies do not stop at the end of the patriarchal age. It continues on and on and on.
God is still working in man, and what He works in man is nothing but His working His Man into us, until we can be joined back to Him as the bride to the Bridegroom, as the body to the Head.
And then you see the new man, the universal man, the will of God accomplished. But of course, in Genesis, you just see the beginning. God is still working. Thank God for that.
Shall we pray?
Dear heavenly Father, we do thank Thee for Thy perfect will: that Thou dost desire that Thy Son, the Man, shall be wrought in many men and women, that we may become that one universal man, that one new man, to satisfy Thy heart.
O our Father, we do pray that our eyes may be opened, that we may see Thy great purpose, Thy grand plan. We thank Thee that we are privileged to be part of that plan and of that purpose.
And Father, we ask that Thou wilt enable us to lay down ourselves, to let go ourselves, and let Thee work, and let Christ be formed in us.
O our Father, Thou art satisfied only with one Man, Thy beloved Son. So we pray that Thou wilt be satisfied with Him in us.
To Thee be the glory. It is all of grace and mercy. In Thy precious name. Amen.