“Creation & Promise” Genesis 1:1-50:26 (Overview)

“Creation & Promise” Genesis 1:1-50:26 (Overview)

An Expositional Sermon
The beginning of a story is pregnant with possibility. Think of your favorite story. How does it start. Anything from “A long, in a galaxy far away.” To, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” To, “Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.” To, “Every Who down in Who-ville liked Christmas a lot…” I remember watching Sherlock Holmes when I was a kid with my dad and if you missed the beginning of the show you missed a lot. How something begins is important to how the rest of a story holds together. And it’s no different in the Bible, but when it comes to the Bible it’s infinitely more important. So today, we’re consider the first book of the Bible – Genesis. Genesis was written by Moses to Israel after the Exodus when God brought Israel out of Egypt through the plagues and gave them the law at Mount Sinai. It covers the history of the world from the creation to the death of Joseph in Egypt around 1600 B.C. It titled Bereshit (בְּרֵאשִׁית) in Hebrew, which means, “In the beginning.” Genesis is a Latin transliteration of the Greek word γένεσις (genesis), which means “origin”. It’s divided into two main sections: (1) The creation and history of all things in chapters 1-11, and (2) God’s promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in chapters 12-50. The first section outlines the creation, fall, and the promise of offspring from Eve that will crush God’s enemy and ultimately our enemy. The second section outlines the specific family and the history of the nation God pursued to fulfill His promise of salvation through judgment. Genesis begins in creation and ends in a coffin.