This message was given at Grace Community Church in Minden, Nevada. At the end, we will give information about how to contact us to receive a copy of this or other messages. We're going to read Genesis chapter 1, verses 1 to 3. We're going to read it corporately together. It will appear on the screen so that we're all reading the same translation. Something wonderful about corporately reading the Word of God together. So let's begin. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. Then God said, let there be light, and there was light. Amen. I'm really having the time of my life studying Genesis, and I just pick up more and more stuff, and the introduction gets longer and longer. I was reading this week, and really fine commentary on Genesis, Dr. Ken Matthews makes this observation, and it just was so striking to me. He said, if we possessed a Bible without Genesis, We would have a house of cards without foundation or mortar. We cannot ensure the continuing fruit of our spiritual heritage if we do not give place to its roots. And just as we have no gospel without the cross, we have no salvation story without the sacred events of Moses' first book. Well, last week we started and we talked about the title, Genesis, origins, the Hebrew title, of course, Bereshit, just meaning in the beginning. And in Hebrew Bible, the title of each book is just the first word of the book. And so, We begin with the book of beginnings, authorship. We see that Moses is the author of not only Genesis, but the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. We do say the first five books plural, but really what we have to understand is that the Pentateuch was written actually as one work to be read as a cohesive whole. And so Moses is the author. The date of the Pentateuch is probably sometime around 1440 BC, and we note it in the outline of Genesis. And the only thing I'm going to remind you this morning is that Genesis is really divided into two major sections. You have 1 through 11, which covers primeval history, in a sense, from the garden to the Tower of Babel. And then you have 12 to 50, which covers patriarchal history. And I'm going to get so excited that I'm going to knock this over any second, and so I'm going to move it, all right? Okay. Now, we also noted that there's a repeated phrase 10 times in the book of Genesis that actually forms the structure of Genesis. It's the Hebrew expression toledot, which means these are the generations of, or this is the story of, or the history of. And they typically, with the exception of the first one, the other nine actually introduce some sort of genealogy. Now, most of the time when we look at genealogies in the Bible, especially the Old Testament, we think that it's something for us to basically skip over fairly quickly because we can't pronounce any of the names. But the fact is that the Toledot structure, these are the generation structure of the book of Genesis, shows us something critically important, and that is on the one hand, it shows us how the seed of the woman continues over and against the seed of the serpent. And in fact, as you compare the genealogies or the generations of, you actually start to notice a number of fascinating intertextual details that we'll actually look at in due time. We won't be doing silly Bible code stuff, but I will be showing you stuff that's actually in the text. Now that brings us to the importance of Genesis which we looked at last week and I said there were three things that stand out and first is that Genesis provides the creation narrative for the Israelites and that was important in the ancient Near East because the Israelites lived in an ancient Near Eastern culture that was full of creation myths. And so what Genesis does is Genesis gives a foundational perspective of the creation narrative by the one true and living God, which in a sense debunks the myths and debunks the false gods of the nations. The second thing, the reason Genesis is important, is because Genesis is so foundational to the rest of the Old and New Testaments. And in fact, what we'll see in a little while is that the New Testament is so heavily reliant upon the book of Genesis. And so Genesis gives us the foundation, not only for the rest of the Old Testament. I mean, think about reading the Old Testament without the book of Genesis. The same thing holds true for the New Testament. It's foundational for the rest of the canonical books. The rest of the 65 books of the canon of Scripture find their foundation, their roots, if you will, in the book of Genesis. And then thirdly, and this is where we ended last week, is that Genesis is foundational for a Christian worldview. Genesis actually uniquely addresses each of the major worldview concerns. Worldview, of course, is a person's fundamental assumptions about life and about existence and about origins and about morality and about self. And Genesis actually addresses those fundamental worldview issues with clarity and with force. And so today what we're going to do is as we continue our introduction, I'm gonna finish last week's sermon and actually talk to you about the message of Genesis. What is Genesis actually about? Because by and large, people think of the book of Genesis and they think of things like the flood, Cain and Abel, they think of basically what we call in sort of a demeaning way, Bible stories. Well, the Bible is a story, of course, but it's a true story, right? So it's story in the sense of true truth, but sometimes we just kind of relegate the book of Genesis to a discombobulated collection of neat events and some not-so-neat events, you know, like Sodom and Gomorrah, and we just kind of keep on moving. But the book of Genesis is so much more. In fact, that's not what the book of Genesis is about. The book of Genesis is not about a disconnected collection of stories that have a nice moral to them. The book of Genesis, first and foremost, is a book about God. Well, the Bible's a book about God. But right out of the gates in the book of Genesis, the book of Genesis is about God, but it is about God first as God the creator. Now here is the amazing thing, and when we finally get to verse 1, which may be next week, all right? We begin with this unbelievable declaration that on the one hand is absolutely so simple And on the other hand, the magnitude and the depth and the weight of Genesis 1 cannot be exaggerated. And right out of the gates, what we have is a God who creates. God is creator, by the way, in the book of Genesis and the rest of the books of the Bible, is actually the self-existing, independent creator of everything that is. His existence is actually from Himself. There's a fancy theological word that we'll pass on right now, but His existence is from Himself. You and I can't even comprehend a self-existing being. It's out of our categorical ability to think. And it is God who actually is this self-existing being who actually brings all things into being out of nothing. This is right out of the gates. And so he's self-existent. By the way, in the book of Exodus, when Moses encounters God at the burning bush in Exodus 3.14, who shall I say sent me? God replies to Moses, you tell them, I am who I am has sent you. He reveals himself as the great I am, which is the basis of the name Yahweh. He is identified in the book of Isaiah. He's identified in the book of Revelation as the Alpha, the Omega, the beginning and the end. And so as we open up the panorama of the book of Genesis, that very first expression, in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, we are introduced to the only being in all of the universe who wasn't created. That is an astonishing thing. He is not dependent for His being on anything or anyone other than Himself. He possesses existence within Himself. I say that and I think, what does that even mean? He possesses existence within himself. I love the words of R.C. Sproul. Sproul says, it is impossible for something to create itself. Agreed? The concept of self-creation is a contradiction in terms, a nonsense statement. I ask the reader to pause and reflect a bit. Nothing can be self-created. Not even God can make himself. For God to create himself, he would have to be before he is. And even God can't do that. Every effect must have a cause. That is true by definition. But God is not an effect. He has no beginning and therefore no antecedent cause. He is eternal. He always was or is. He has within Himself the power of being. He requires no assistance from outside sources to continue to exist. This is what is meant by the idea of self-existent. Granted, it's a lofty, awesome concept. We know of nothing quite like it. Everything we perceive in our frame of reference is dependent and creaturely. We cannot fully comprehend anything as self-existent. That's the God of Genesis. Years and years ago, I've told this story. in theology classes over the years, many, many, many times. One night, Zach was about five years old, we were having kids desiring God, we were at the old building, and of course, every time they'd come out of Sunday school, or kids desiring God, he'd say, so what'd you guys learn about tonight? And of course, he'd say, God. And it was the same answer always. So one night, I pushed him a little farther, and I said, what did you learn tonight? And he says, we learned about God. I said, what did you learn about God? And he takes a deep breath and he says, we learned that God is incomprehensible. That's good, that's good, Zach. That's impressive. But what does that mean that God is incomprehensible? He takes another deep breath. He says, God is so big, we can't figure him out. Hey, That's a pretty good definition of incomprehensible. And so here is this God who is self-existing, but he is also the God who is self-sufficient. And so who can become his counselor? Who can teach him anything? This is the God who in Isaiah 40 is the self-sufficient God. He's the God who in Acts chapter 17 verses 24 and 25 is the God that does not dwell with temples made with human hands as if he needed anything, but in Him we live and move and have our being. This is the God of whom it is said, for from Him and through Him and unto Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen. And so God has within Himself all that's required for Him being God. So A.W. Tozer, knowledge of the holy, he says, it is morally imperative that we purge from our minds all ignoble concepts of the deity and let him be the God in our minds that he is in his universe. The Christian religion has to do with God and man, but its focal point is God, not man. Man's only claim to importance is that he was created in the divine image. In himself, he's nothing. The psalmist and the prophets of scripture refer in sad scorn to weak man whose breath is in his nostrils, who grows up like grass in the morning only to be cut down and withers before the setting of the sun. That God exists for himself and man For the glory of God is the emphatic teaching of the Bible. The high honor of God is first in heaven as it must yet be in the earth. And so God is a self-existing, self-sufficient being who, by the way, creates everything out of nothing. ex nihilo, out of nothing. And in fact, as we think about this, once again, we are absolutely staggered. We don't have a mental category to think of anything that's created out of nothing. He brings into existence everything that exists and brings it into being out of nothing. He speaks, and He brings that which was not into that which now is. And so the first message of the book of Genesis is that there is a Creator who is self-existing, independent, self-sufficient, and gloriously Trinitarian. Now, we're not going to do this right now, but let me just say from the outset that creation itself is unambiguously Trinitarian. It is God who is creating by the power of His Word, being mediated by the power of His Spirit. Right? And so, here's God, self-existing, self-sufficient, Trinitarian, and He creates out of nothing, and He creates out of nothing for His own glory and pleasure. And so, why does God create? Years and years ago, when I took my first Holy Communion in the Catholic Church, Everybody gives you presents. And I got a record set. Now, records. Some of you know what they are, some of you don't have any idea what I'm talking about. There's a vinyl, how big were they? About that big. And they're vinyl, and you gotta be careful not to scratch them. And it was the story of the Bible, okay? And my aunt gave them to me, and so there was a book that went with the records. And so you'd put the record on a record player, that's what you did with records, and then you'd put the little needle on, and you'd push play, and you would listen, and you'd follow along in the book. And so there were all kinds of stories and they were done. So understand this is like 1974. And so they're done in these really, really cool 1974 watercolors. All right. And the first book was called In the Beginning. I still have it to this day. You open it up and there is this. There is this august figure with a long white beard, wearing a long robe with a huge crown, and his head is down, and he's got his hands in front of him like this. And the first line of that book says, a long, long, long time ago, God was by himself and very, very lonely. So what does the book do? The book then tells us God's brilliant idea to remedy his own loneliness was to create the world and man and woman. That solved his problem, didn't it? I mean, you have to understand that if that is the storyline, and it is not, but if that is the storyline, you have to understand the cure was worse than the disease. When we come to the Bible, what we see is we see God's motivation for creation, and it wasn't loneliness, it wasn't that he really wanted somebody to walk in the garden with, it was for his own glory and his own pleasure. In other words, the Bible presents God as not this deficient being who has needs that need to be met by creation. You do not fulfill any needs of the Creator. He fulfills your needs. You don't fulfill His needs. If you really think that you're the answer to God's loneliness, you belong in a psychiatric hospital. God is a being of just overflowing abundance. He's pictured as an overflowing fountain. He is abounding, there's a fullness to God. He's abounding in loving kindness, compassion, glory, and so what does he do? Worthy are you, they sing in heaven, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and because of your will, they existed and were created. The psalmist celebrates Psalm 19, the heavens are declaring the glory of the Lord. Their expanse is declaring the work of His hands. Day to day pours forth speech and night to night reveals knowledge. So when God takes up the great free work of creation, not compelled, the great free work of creation, it is nothing less than the overflow of his own glory and his beauty and his power, and that gets put on display in his creation. And so, little smarty pants Job wants an audience with God. And God says, okay, I get to go first. Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who set its measurements, since you know? Who stretched the line on it? On what were its bases sunk or who laid its cornerstone? Listen to this, when the morning stars, reference to the angels, when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy. God promises, Numbers 14.21, Indeed as I live, all the earth will be filled with the glory of the Lord. Habakkuk 2.14, For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. Now, why is this important? Because if God is indeed self-existing and self-sufficient, He does not create to somehow fill a void in Himself. He creates out of the overflow of His own self-existence and self-sufficiency. And so He creates not out of need, but He creates freely all that is as a reflection of His eternal purpose and glory and power, which means that right now, from the beginning of the cosmos to the present time, to its consummation, we can say without fear of contradiction, the most high, the Lord most high is to be feared because he is the great king over all of the earth. And so we sang it this morning, God you reign. God, you reign. He creates all of these things and He reigns. He rules His creation. And so, this Creator who is self-existing, self-sufficient, He is also now Lord of absolutely everything. There is not one single solitary maverick molecule that is out from under His control in His universe. He is Lord. Second message of Genesis, if you will, is also about God and in it we see God is the self-disclosing God. Now, it's one thing to say God is self-existing and self-sufficient and he's Lord over everything. It's something else to say that it's this God who has actually now done what? Take the initiative to reveal himself to his rational creatures who bear his image. God actually takes the initiative to reveal himself, both in natural revelation, that is in creation and in what we are as human beings, but more specifically, in special revelation. And so God does reveal certain things about himself in the created order, and he does that with beauty and power, but there are certain things that you cannot actually learn about God, which are vital to know, but He has taken the initiative to reveal those things to us. In other words, the God who created is also the God who takes initiative to reveal Himself to us. And so at the end of the day, the Bible is not a book about man finding God. The Bible is a book about God revealing Himself to man. How does He do that in the book of Genesis? Well, I think 1.1 is a pretty good start. But think about this with me. He reveals himself as Elohim. El in Hebrew means mighty one. It's a reference to God's authority, his transcendence, his majesty. Notice it's a plural form, Elohim. The plural form emphasizes his majesty, his vastness, and I also think implies plurality within the Godhead. It's not an accident that in 128 he said, let us make man in our image. Let us, plural, make, third person singular, first person singular, let us make man in our image. And so he reveals himself as Elohim, he reveals himself as Yahweh. In the book of Genesis, God's covenant name is used. Now, there is going to be, we see this in Exodus chapter 3 and Exodus chapter 6, There are certain aspects to God's divine name, Yahweh, that the patriarchs did not fully understand, but do get revealed when God goes to redeem His people from the land of bondage. But He uses that name, and it's the divine name which expresses self-existence, I am who I am, self-determination, and covenant fidelity. All of those things, and you can see it through the different usages of the term Yahweh in the Old Testament, all of those things are woven in self-existence, self-determination, and covenant fidelity to his people. And so, I love this from John Piper. He says, push back with me before there was any earth or any solar system or galaxies or universe at all. Push back in your imagination to when there was only God. Then, if you can, push back behind God. Where did He come from? How did He get to be the way He is? If you ask me how I got to be the way I am, I would answer that my father and mother gave me a set of genes, and they reared me in a certain way, and I've been surrounded by thousands of influences in my environment. That's how I got to be the way I am. But when we ask God how he got to be how he is, he answers, I am who I am. In other words, nobody gave me a set of genes. Nobody and no power brought me into existence or shape my personality. I had no beginning. There's no reality outside of myself that did not come from me. And so there is no force or influence upon my character or power, except that which comes from me and is controlled by me. I'm utterly absolute, and behind me, there is no reality. And so, as we come to the self-disclosure of God in the book of Genesis, and he uses the name Yahweh, it is a declaration that he is who he is. He is the one who was, the one who is, and the one who is to come, and he will be God for us, therefore, at all times and in all places. He reveals Himself as El Elyon, God Most High, Genesis 14. He reveals Himself as God Almighty, El Shaddai, Genesis 17.1. El Shaddai is the supremacy over all things, the power, the strength. By the way, with the implication of the power and strength to keep all that He has promised. He is everlasting God, El Elom, Genesis 21. He is the God who actually has no beginning, no end. He is the God who is the eternal one. He is El Roi, the God who sees. A reflection, Genesis 16, of his sensitivity to the human experience and to human suffering, spoken specifically to Hagar. He is Yahweh Yireh, the God who provides, or more technically, the God who will see to it. Genesis chapter 22. God's names reveal His character. His character is in one sense propositional, that is expresses truth about Him, but then also deeply personal because He is what He is for His people. So as we come to Genesis, We'll be continually asking and seeing answered this question, what is God like? And Genesis will come back again and again and again telling us who he is and what he is like and who he is for his people. Understand when God chose to create and to create for himself a people, he determined that all that he is, he would be on behalf of those who are his own. Third message of Genesis. God is not only the self-existing, self-sufficient creator, He's not only the self-disclosing God who reveals himself in the pages of Genesis, but he is also the covenant Lord and Redeemer. In Genesis, we don't have a God who just creates and then leaves creation. That's sort of just a classic deism idea that God creates and he's out doing something else a little more important right now. and he's detached from his creation. That's not the picture that you get in the book of Genesis whatsoever. This transcendent majestic God who brings into being all that is by the power of his spoken word is now also the God who is interpersonal with his creation. He makes man. The crowning achievement of the creation week is creating man in his own image and likeness. And he makes man out of his fullness, and he seeks to enter into a shared life with him in covenant. He creates Adam and Eve in the garden. and all of their posterity, as it were, to actually image him in creation as vice regents who would actually rule over his kingdom here upon earth. They were to image him in this world and actually to fill this earth with his glory by being fruitful and multiplying. That's why we were created. So John Piper says, the deepest longing of the human heart is to know and enjoy the glory of God. The deepest longing of your heart is not for some sense of self-esteem. The deepest longing of your heart will never be satisfied with a healthy self-image. I'm not pooh-poh-ing those things, yes I am, I'm dismissing them, because, because, because, Pfeiffer goes on to say, we're all starved for the glory of God, not self. No one goes to the Grand Canyon to increase their self-esteem. So Augustine said it 1,600 years ago, thou has made us for thyself and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee. And so God creates man. to enter into an interpersonal covenant relationship with man, and of course according to God's eternal decree, man in course of action decides that he will actually be autonomous. And he will not depend upon God nor trust in God or embrace his word. And as a result, Adam and Eve fall into sin. But it is at this very point that God himself reveals that he is indeed a God of super abounding grace. So, we'll get to this more in detail later, but let me just throw it out there for you to chew on a little bit. As you wrestle with the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man, I ask you, if man had not fallen into sin, there would have been a glaring omission in the revelation of the character of God. Think about it. A glaring omission in the character of God. If man had not fallen into sin, if man had not needed to be rescued, there would have never been any need for God himself to show that he is a God who is abounding in covenant loyalty, mercy, and grace to those who are in need. And so the fall happens according to plan, and it happens according to plan so that God can now demonstrate that he is a God of grace. It's reading in, Gleason Archer's survey of Old Testament introduction, and he says something so interesting. He says, the guiding principle throughout the narrative is the covenant of grace. and God's gracious dealings with true believers from the time of Adam onward. In other words, what Archer is saying is when you get right down to it, what's being revealed foremost in terms of God's relationship to man is his graciousness to man. And so that grace, of course, is shown in a universal sense. You can't read the book of Genesis and actually not see the grace of God in a universal sense. That is, God actually restrains corruption. He brings judgment. He prevents anarchy. He establishes law and establishes government. All of those things are actually a demonstration of his common grace to the entirety of the human race, but then there's also a sense that there is a special grace that's demonstrated in the book of Genesis. And so just as we have, as it were, natural revelation, which is quite general, and then we have special revelation, which is very specific and very targeted, so we have common grace, which is universal in general, and then we have special grace, and in special grace, what do we see? We see God actually making sovereign choices. We see God making sovereign choices. So it's Jacob, not Esau. It's Abram, while a sun and moon worshiper. It is a God who actually chooses Isaac, not Ishmael. There is the sovereignty of grace at work in the book of Genesis, and we can argue even from the beginning. His grace is also demonstrated in calling. How in the world, how in the world would Abram of Ur of the Chaldees follow the voice of a God whom he did not know unless there was an effectual call of God that empowered Abram to actually go to a place that he did not know and to step out by faith? Grace is demonstrated in His sanctifying work. He walks with His people. He tests their faith. He keeps them in the midst of affliction and even in the midst of their sin. And so what we see about God in the book of Genesis is that He is covenant Lord and He is Redeemer and He loves His people and He's a God of superabounding grace to those who need it most. Finally, Genesis ultimately points us to God's Son, Jesus Christ. I, by the way, am not one of those people who picks up a book and reads the end first. Any of you do that? Steve Nugent. I would have guessed. You pick up a novel and you read the end. You pick up a book and you read the end first. Let me just tell you that in a universe of moral order, that's wrong. You don't read the end first, okay? But There is something magnificent about coming to the end. And then when you come to the end and you see what the end is all about, and then you see how the end ties into everything that went before it, there is this wonderful compulsion that says, I need to read that again. And then as you read it again, guess what? You never read it the same because you've come to the end. And so you're constantly, you go back and you read it again. And when you read it again, you read it in the light of the end. Right? That's what we do. You do it with movies. Oh my goodness. And then you go, oh, I see that now. And I see that now. And I see that now. And I see that connection. And I see why this person did that. And I see why they left the gun on the table. And I see why they left the shower running. And you go see all of this stuff. And the thing is, is that you're actually reading now, but you're reading in light of the end. So once you come to the end, you're ruined. Because you never read it the same again. Or maybe you're not ruined. Maybe you're actually reading with intelligence, okay? So, everything changes when you know the end, right? Do you agree? Now, there are certain novels that don't do that, and they're very frustrating, but most of the time, that's what happens. So, the first time, I hope this imagery works, the first time you read something, You read it from left to right. And you say, no duh. We're reading Hebrew, we'd read right to left, but since we're reading English, it's left to right. It's not what I'm talking about. First time you read it, you read it from left to right. But once you get to the end and you go back and read it all over again, you now read from right to left. Some of you are like, you're insane. No, it's true. In other words, when you're reading from left to right, the only thing that you know is where you're at. You have to wait till later chapters and later scenes to unfold, and so you're constantly reading from left to right, so the story is progressing without you understanding how it progresses. But once you get to the end and you start to read again, you now are in essence reading from right to left. That is, you're starting at the beginning, but you're starting with the end in view so that now everything starts to make sense. That's what happens when we read the Bible. We no longer are left to right readers, okay? So we don't look at the Old Testament as a Jewish book. It is a profoundly Christian book. Why? Because we know the end, right? And we read it in light of the end. And so this is what happens. So I said it last week, the last things are as the first. And so remember, we saw this on Easter, where Jesus is with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, and beginning with Moses in the Psalms and the Prophets, he explained to them from the Scriptures how the Messiah must suffer and then enter into his glory. All right, then we see in John 5, for instance, Jesus says, you search the scriptures because in them you think you have eternal life, but it is these who speak of me. If you believe Moses, you would believe me. And so Sidney Gray Donis comments, he says, the context of the Genesis narrative in the Christian Bible is not just the Old Testament, but also the New Testament. Now this, by the way, is just more than Old Testament prophecies. in the book of Genesis. How many specific prophecies do you think there are in the book of Genesis regarding the Messiah? Well, there's a pretty large handful. probably around 15 to 20 specific messianic prophecies. But understand that there's more to seeing Jesus in the book of Genesis than just specific prophecies. That is, there are the ways that God works with his people, establishing patterns, redemptive historical progression, promise and fulfillment, typology, or if you think longitudinal themes, that is themes that can be traced from the beginning all the way to the end, kingdom, covenant, grace, redemption. The New Testament actually quotes Genesis explicitly 35 times, but alludes to Genesis over 200 times! That's a lot! I love what Nancy Guthrie says. She says, as we read the Old Testament, We don't merely want to make observations about the behavior of the godly and the godless and then try harder to be like the godly and less like the godless. Instead, we need to realize that there are no true heroes in the Old Testament. No one is perfectly and persistently pleasing to God. The judges aren't strong enough, the kings aren't good enough, the prophets aren't clear enough, and the priests aren't pure enough. The Old Testament serves to point out our carnivorous need for a better law keeper, a better judge, a better prophet, a better priest, a better king. Jesus must have looked at the disciples on the road to Emmaus that day and said, that's me. I'm the one the whole Old Testament points to. I'm the God intended to send all along. The Old Testament is an uncompleted story, a promise waiting for fulfillment, and it's Jesus who is that fulfillment. And so, In closing, Jesus is the creative word and wisdom of God. In the beginning was the word. The word was with God, the word was God. He is the image of the invisible God, says Paul, the firstborn of all creation. By him all things were created. Both in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions, rulers or authorities, all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things and in him all things hold together. God, says the writer to the Hebrews, after He spoke long ago to the fathers and the prophets in many ways and in many portions in these last days has spoken to us in His Son. whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom He also made the world. He's the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and He upholds all things by the word of His power. And so, if you want just a little bit of a taste of how Jesus Christ is pointed to in the book of Genesis, I would remind you, not only is He the cosmic creator, John 1, 3, He is also the light of the world, John 8, 12. He is also the seed of the woman, Galatians 4, 4, and the seed of Abraham, Galatians 3, 16. He is the son who was not spared, Romans chapter 8 and verse 32. He is Jacob's ladder that comes down from heaven, John 1 51. He is Israel's deliverer and king. And I would remind all of us the scepter does not depart from Judah until Shiloh comes. The list could go on. The Bible is a book. Genesis is a book about God. He is the central actor on the stage. He is the true hero, ultimately manifested in his own son. And so, as we study the book of Genesis, my full expectation is that God will honor his word and help us to know him more and to trust him more, because those who know thy name will put their trust in thee. Let's pray. Father, how we thank you for this book of the beginning, and we pray that you would nourish our souls on it. We pray that you would help us, Father, to see, to see you, to see your work, to see who you are for us. We pray, Father, that you would open our eyes, even as you did with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, so that we would see Jesus. We pray that our hearts would burn within us as the scriptures are expounded. We pray that you would sanctify us in the truth. Thy word is truth. Receive our praise. In Jesus' name, amen. We hope you've enjoyed this message from Grace Community Church in Minden, Nevada. To receive a copy of this or other messages, call us at area code 775-782-6516 or visit our website gracenevada.com.