The Book of Genesis is the first book of the Bible, and its storyline divides into

two main parts. There's chapters one through 11, which tells the story of God in
the whole world. And then there's chapters 12 through 50, which zoom in and tell
the story of God and just one man, Abraham, and then his family. And these two
parts are connected by a hinge story at the beginning of chapter 12. And this
design gives us a clue to how to understand the message of the book as a whole, and
how it introduces the story of the whole Bible. So the book begins with God taking
the disorder and the darkness described in the second sentence of the Bible, and
God brings out of it order and beauty and goodness. He makes a world where life can
flourish, and God makes these creatures called humans or Adam in Hebrew. He makes
them in his image, which has to do with their role and purpose in God's world. So
the humans are made to be reflections of God's character out into the world, and
they're appointed as God's representatives to rule his world on his behalf, which
in context means to harness all of its potential to care for it and make it a place
where even more life can flourish. God blesses the humans. That's the key word in
this book, and he gives them a garden, like a place from which they begin starting
to build this new world. Now, the key is that the humans have a choice about how
they're going to go about building this world, and that's represented by the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil. Up till now, God has provided and defined what
is good and what is not good. But now God is giving the humans the dignity and the
freedom of a choice. Are they going to trust God's definition of good and evil, or
are they going to seize autonomy and define good and evil for themselves? And the
stakes are really high. To rebel against God is to embrace death, because you're
turning away from the giver of life himself. This is represented by the tree of
Life. And so in chapter three, a mysterious figure, a snake, enters into the story.
The snakes are given no introduction other than it's a creature that God made, and
it becomes clear that it's a creature in rebellion against God, and it wants to
lead the humans into rebellion and their death. The snake tells a different story
about the tree and the choice. It says that seizing the knowledge of good and evil
are not going to bring death, that it's actually the way to life and becoming like
God themselves. Now, the irony of this is tragic because we know the humans,
they're already like God. They were made to reflect God's image. But instead of
trusting God, the human sees autonomy. They take the knowledge of good and evil for
themselves, and in an instant, the whole story spirals out of control. The first
casualty is human relationships the man and the woman. They suddenly realize how
vulnerable they are now. They can't even trust each other. And so they make clothes
and they hide their bodies from one another. The second casualty is that intimacy
between God and the humans is lost. So they go and run and hide from God. And then
when God finds them, they start this game of blame shifting about who rebelled
first. Now, right here, the story stops and there's a series of short poems where
God declares to the snake and then to the humans the tragic consequences of their
actions. God first tells the snake that despite its apparent victory, it is
destined for defeat to eat dust. God promises that one day a seed or a descendant
will come from the woman who's going to deliver a lethal strike to the snake's
head. Which sounds like great news, but this victory is going to come with a cost,
because the snake, too, will deliver a lethal strike to the descendants. Heal as
it's being crushed. It's a very mysterious promise of this wounded Victor. But in
the flow of the story so far, you see this as an act of God's grace. The humans,
they've just rebelled. And what does God do? He promises to rescue them. But this
doesn't erase the consequences of the humans decision. So God informs them that now
every aspect of their life, together, at home and out in the field, it's going to
be fraught with grief and pain because of the rebellion all leading to their death.
From here, the story then spirals downward. Chapters three through 11. They trace
the widening ripple effect of the rebellion and of human relationships fracturing
at every level. So there's a story about two brothers, Cain and Abel. Cain, so
jealous of his brother that he wants to murder him. And God warns him not to give
in to the temptation, but he does anyway. He murders him in the field. So Cain then
goes on to build a city where violence and oppression reign. And this is all
epitomized in the story of Lamech. He's the first man in the Bible to have more
than one wife. He's accumulating them like property. And then he goes on to sing a
short song about how he's more violent and vengeful than Cain ever was. After this,
we get an odd story about the sons of God, which could refer to. To evil angelic
beings. Or it could refer to ancient kings who claimed that they descended from the
gods. And like Lamech, they acquire as many wives as they wanted. And they produce
the Nephilim, these great warriors of old. Whichever view is right, the point is
that humans are building kingdoms that fill gods world with violence and even more
corruption. In response, we're told that God is broken with grief. Humanity is
ruining his good world, and they're ruining each other. And so, out of a passion to
protect the goodness of his world, he washes it clean of humanity's evil with a
great flood. But he protects one blameless human, Noah and his family, and he
commissions him as a new Adam. He repeats the divine blessing and commissions him
to go out into the world. And so our hopes are really high. But then Noah fails
too. And also in a garden he goes and he plants a vineyard, and he gets drunk out
of his mind. And then one of his sons, Ham, does something shameful to his father
in the tent. And so here we have our new Adam, naked and ashamed, just like the
first. And the downward spiral begins again. It all leads to the foundation of the
city of Babylon, the people of ancient Mesopotamia. They come together around this
new technology. They have the brick, and they can make cities and towers bigger and
faster than anybody has ever done before. And they want to build a new kind of
tower that will reach up to the gods, and they will make a great name for
themselves. It's an image of human rebellion and arrogance. It's the Garden
Rebellion now writ large. And so God humbles their pride and scatters them. Now,
this is a diverse group of stories, but you can see they're all exploring the same
basic point. God keeps giving humans the chance to do the right thing with his
world, and humans keep ruining it. These stories are making a claim that we live in
a good world, that we have turned bad, that we've all chosen to define good and
evil for ourselves. And so we all contribute to this world of broken relationships
leading to conflict and violence and ultimately, death. But there's hope. God
promised that one day a descendant would come the wounded victor who will defeat
evil at its source. And so, despite humanity's evil, God is determined to bless and
rescue his world. And so the big question, of course, is what is God going to do?
And the next story, the hinge offers the answer. But for now, that's what Genesis
one through 11 is all about.