Genesis

The Book of Genesis.

1. Creation

Who is in charge here?

Who is in charge of everything?

God. He rules over everything. Let's get that clear before we proceed.

What does it mean to rule something?

You speak and it is done.

We see this most clearly in Genesis 1.

God speaks, and things are made.

“1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. 3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.”

God created the world to run on natural patterns. Light and darkness. Day and night. Land and sea. Plants and animals. Man and woman.

16 And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars.

In God’s cosmic order, he established an authoritative pattern of how the sun, moon, and stars would rule over different times and orbits. They exercise a certain gravity over everything on earth. The sun presiding over the day is one simple way to see what it means to have authority.

Gen. 1:26: Then 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 birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

God said, I want to make people who are like me. What does it mean for humans to be like God? It means they have dominion. They will rule over all living things, just like God rules over everything. They'll make things, just like God make things.

Gen 1:27 So God created man in his own image,

    in the image of God he created him;

    male and female he created them.

Men and women were created together to rule together. How do they help each other?

28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

Men and women help each other rule by being fruitful and multiplying. That is, having sex and bearing children. Making new humans is one way that people can be like God - making life. It's not the only way to be like God, but it's one of the most central.

God made us to fill the earth - that is, to find territory for ourselves. One of the best ways to do that is to have a good woman. But it also means putting in a lot of long, hard work by yourself.

Now we can see this theme throughout the book of Genesis and ultimately the whole Bible: how are men going to fill the earth and subdue it? Are they going to do it in a godly way or a sinful way? Who is going to be in charge?

Now what does all of this have to do with you? What God said here about man and woman in general applies to you. He made you to be like him. He made you to be a ruler and a maker. Some people today deny that - they just want you to obey and they just want you to consume. But God made you to make things and take charge of things.

Key Take Aways

God made us to be like him.

Being like God can involve making things, taking charge of things, and making new life.

Discussion Questions

In your life today, what are you in charge of? Do you have any say over anything?

What would you like to take charge of some day?

Do you think people in general today care about being fruitful and subduing the earth? What would that look like today? For people who don't care, why do you think they've lost sight of this?

How does our culture undermine God's authority? How does it undermine men's authority?

Is there anything that you work on making?

3. The Fall

It's great to be a human being. We get opposable thumbs and gigantic brains and upright posture. We are undeniably greater than any living thing on earth. Pat yourselves on the back.

Some people are ashamed of being human. They wish we could be more like animals. Some don't want to have children -- they would rather raise a dog than a human being made in the image of God - and their own resemblance, for that matter. Some of them don't even want to live very much.

We were made by God to be like him - as little gods, in a way. (John 10:34) But we often don't feel very godlike.

If we're so spectacular, where did all of this shame come from?

Well, part of our great inheritance also includes a curse. Everything in the world now is full of difficulty and pain and death. It's blood, sweat, and tears all the way through. We were meant to be like God, but now men do nothing but work and deal with problems and failure constantly.

How did it get like this?

Reading: Genesis 3:1-3:24

"3:1 Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” 2 And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, 3 but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’” 4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. 5 For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” 6 So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. 7 Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths."

Because we sin and trespass against God's commands, we become ashamed of ourselves. We have enemies around us all the time who are trying to lure us across the line, to lure us to their way of doing things - opposed to God's way. We might be tempted to blur the lines a little bit from what we know God has commanded, to get what we want. Ultimately, that leads to shame, curses, and our death.

You will note that the serpent was technically correct about much of what it said. Liars are very good at using selective truths.

You will also notice that the woman was in the driver's seat here. We don't have anything recorded from what Adam had to say at the moment about the most consequential decision of human history. If he had been doing his job of tending the garden and dealing with the crafty serpents inside of it, maybe this wouldn't have happened.

"8 And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. 9 But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” 10 And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” 11 He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten of the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?” 12 The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” 13 Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this that you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.”

You see, Adam has become very self-conscious. He doesn't want to be seen by God. He's looking at himself and thinking about himself. He's no longer thinking about God or his wife or the animals or any of the duties he was given. Sin takes us away from the mission. And we also want to blame other people for our problems. Adam turns the accusation back on God -- it's the woman's fault, and who gave me the woman? God. So we even want to pin the blame for our problems on God and the gifts he gave us.

When we trespass against God's law, we receive a curse. That's the way the world works.

"14 The Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. 15 I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.”

First the serpent is cursed. There is now eternal enmity between man and the serpent, and all forces of evil that the serpent represents. There’s going to be violence. But there is also a promise of hope for mankind - that there will be a child from the man and woman who will crush the serpent even as the serpent tries to destroy the promised child.

"16 To the woman he said, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.”

There is debate over how to translate the last part of the curse properly. But the point of it is this: this promised child who is going to save everything won't come easily. It will be painful and awful to bring about that child, and, to top it off, man and woman just will not get along. Women will want to run men's lives and men will want to run women's lives, and they'll both drive each other crazy. And so it has gone in every generation of humankind ever since, because of sin.

"17 And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; 18 thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Many men today don't listen enough to their wives. They've trained themselves to tune them out. However, other men do whatever their wives tell them to do, even if it isn't right. It seems like Adam had the latter problem - his wife convinced him to break God's command, and he should have obeyed God rather than his wife. There are many women today who would prefer you obeyed their word over God's.

As a result of sin, it's not just that Adam is cursed with pain and difficulty - everyone is cursed with pain and difficulty. And not just everyone - the land itself. "Cursed is the ground." We are living in a world that man was put in charge of, and that man was cursed, and so the whole world gets cursed as a result. We can't even fathom what a universe without death and futility would be like to live in. It seems like a fairy tale, because we haven't seen with our own eyes what the world was before it was cursed. But because of sin, all we are familiar with now is this world, full of anguish.

"20 The man called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. 21 And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skins and clothed them. 22 Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” 23 therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. 24 He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life."

Man was meant to have eternal life. Every tree was originally given for man to eat. But because Adam sinned, and the rest of us just like him, we can no longer have access to eternal life, and we can't dwell with God in peace, and we can't be like him as we were meant to be.

That is, unless we can find a way to have the curse removed from us, and to restore the way to eternal life.

Now this is what it means to be a man in this cursed world. You still have to live out the mission to rule over the earth, but now that is mission is marked by pain and failure. You might work hard at things and they don't turn out. Our lives are filled with thorns and thistles. Some of them are put there directly by our own sinful choices; other thorns are there because someone else put them there, and now we have to deal with. Many men won't take responsibility for all of the thorns. They just give up. They blame women or God for all the problems. But men who decide to stand up and take responsibility for dealing with the thorns are the ones who get closer to subduing the earth.

Expanded Thoughts:

Speaker or an adult should share a personal story about how he has had to deal with serious "thorns"-- obstacles, frustration, or futility at some point during his mission in life.

Key Take Aways:

The world is messed up. We have to struggle under a terrible curse because of Adam's sin as well as our own personal sin.

People are messed up. Men and women were suppose to work together, but now we're set against each other.

We need to work regardless of the thorns.

Discussion questions:

Where do you see thorns in your life?

If getting married is part of taking dominion over the world, how does that relate to Jesus, who never married during his earthly ministry? (The New Testament describes his bride metaphorically as the whole church. We work together to be Jesus' helpers as he goes about the task of subduing the earth the way man was originally meant to.)

How has Jesus brought the tree of life back to us? (His sacrifice on the tree of the cross bears a kind of spiritual fruit that he gives freely to those who believe, and those who eat of it live forever.)