and start this Bible survey. Genesis means the book of beginnings.
Genesis means beginning, the book of beginnings. Moses is
one attributed to writing this book, the first five books of
the scriptures, called the Pentateuch, meaning five. But I know this,
that the first thing we're confronted with is, in the beginning, God.
In the beginning, God. That's the first thing we're
confronted with. Out of eternity comes God. And God breaks in
in time and space. And He says, in the beginning,
God. No one knew where He'd come from.
No one knows where His beginning is or where His ending's at.
Eternity dwelt in Him, and this universe dwelt in Him, and He
could choose to create or not create. He could choose to do
what He willed to do when He willed to do it. There's no telling
how many universes, how many galaxies, how many stars, how
many worlds there are in this vast, vast, vast, you can't imagine. But here He took
a ball. world of all, without form and
without void, and out of nothing He created something. But it
says in the beginning, God. And let me say this at the outset,
that He created the heaven and the earth, and the Bible, the
Bible, God's blessed Word, describes the origination of all living
creatures to the living God. He has to be alive and living
for Him to create life. Matter cannot create matter.
Only God can create matter. And God created. And the word
God, you take that just the word God Himself, it's used 32 times
in Genesis 1 alone. 32 times. I know men like to
ignore Him. I know men like to deny Him.
I know that men wish He didn't exist. I know that men claim
that it doesn't exist, but I do know this, that beloved men are
going to have to face God one way or another. They're going
to have to face Him, and that's why even the creation, the creation
declares God. The heavens declare His glory. The firmament, the things on
this earth show His handiwork. Where did the things that are
made, who made them? Who made them? And so, you see,
beloved, we have the creation here. And then this verse is,
in all the way through, it's God who does all things. In the
beginning, God created the heaven and the earth. Singular. Not
heavens, heavens. And the earth was without form
and void. Darkness was upon the face of
the deep. The Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.
God said, let there be light. And there was light. And God
saw the light, that it was good. And God divided the light from
the darkness. And whenever you start reading
this blessed book, particularly here, it's God. We see this.
And this is the law of first mention. And this is the seed
plot of the Bible. It's God who does all things.
God did all the creating. And He did it all by speaking.
It's God who does all. It's He that creates. It's He
that speaks. It's He that sees what He makes
and says it's all good. It's He that divides the heavens
and the earth, the water and the land, the stars and the sun
and the moon. It's He that divides. He's the
one that calls things into existence as though they be not. It's He
who makes something out of nothing. It's He who sets the firmaments
in the heavens to set man on the earth. It's He that does
these things. And then He blesses them and
say, multiply and replenish the earth. And when the earth was
without content, there was a time nothing on this earth. It said
that without darkness on the face of the deep, without form
and void, there was nothing but that. And when the earth was
without content, It is God who fills it with grass, trees, herbs,
animals, birds, fishes. It's God who put that on there. God did it all. And oh, beloved,
when the world is without definite form, it has no form. We see
a form now. We take pictures of things. It's
got form. We see a big mountain. We take
a picture of it. We see a beautiful river scene, and we take a picture
of it, see a beautiful bunch of flowers, we take... These
things got form. But there was a time when the
earth was without form. And when the earth was without
definite form, it's He, God, who imparted to it a definite
and visible form. And He done it in three ways.
First of all, He divided the light from the darkness. You
see darkness, you see light, distinct form. Before there was
no darkness for life, just darkness without form and void. And then
He, the waters that are above, that's in the sky, that's in
the heavens, that's in the clouds, and then the water that's on
the earth, He gave us a firmament to look to, clouds to look to. Job says that the clouds that
God made them, and they're full of water, and they won't fall
until God causes the water to fall out of them. And He had
this water on earth and gave form to those things that were
not there. And then he took the streams and gave them a boundary
and brought land up out of the streams. God did all that. And his highest creation was
man. He said, let us make man in our
own image after our likeness. Now, let me tell you something
about that. Now, God is a spirit, so God has no So when he says,
let us make man in our image, he's talking about God making
a man who's a spiritual being who has the ability to commune
in fellowship with God until that communion and fellowship
is lost. And then when he says, in our likeness, that tells us
that Christ, since he made us a man, that Christ is going to
come and be made in our likeness as a man. Now let me tell you
this, four major events, four major events in this First of all, there's the creation.
We're just talking about that. And then there's the fall of
man, when man fell into sin, in Genesis chapter 3. And then
there's the great flood, when God destroyed everything that
was on the topside of God's earth and saved Noah and two of every
creature except clean beast. He saved seven of each of those.
And then there's the Tower of Babel, when man decided he's
going to build him a tower up to God. He's going to reach God. He's going to attain, going to
work his way to God, build a tower that'll reach into heaven, that
God can be reached with the work of man's hands, that you can
reach God with the work of your hands. And God went down, and
he says, oh, man is so confused. How confused is a man that thinks
he can build a tower and come to where I am, when the heavens
of heaven can't contain him? And he said, I'll go down. And
I'll confuse them, and confound them, and scatter them, till
they won't even be able to talk to one another anymore. Everybody
spoke the same language until God scattered them, and He scattered
the earth, and scattered men all over the earth. But let me
tell you something about this creation. Why? And I say this,
and the reason we got these first five verses that I really want
to look at here, and I can get with the whole But, you know,
what's the matter here is that when we look at these first five
verses, we see a picture, first of all, of Christ in the beginning.
It's God who created and He spake. Now, all things that were made
were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that
was made. He was the Word that dwelt with God and was God. And
for by Him were all things created that are in heaven and that are
in earth. God created by the Lord Jesus Christ. He was daily
His delight. And beloved, then it says, And
the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the
face of the deep. Now, why would he say that? Why
would he let us know that? That here's this terrestrial
ball, and this darkness, wherever you look, there's darkness. And there's deep there. And there's
no form, there's no voice, just deep, deep, deep darkness. And it talked about over in Exodus,
well, that was a darkness that could be felt. Well, this is
darkness. And that tells us what we were.
Tells us how dark and depraved and sinful and wretched that
we are. And darkness, men love darkness
rather than light. We're in the depth of darkness.
And look what happens now. And we were without form and
voice. I mean, we have to have the form of God. We're a boy
of God. We're a boy of life. We're a
boy of spiritual understanding. And then the Spirit of God moved
upon the face of the waters. And that's what has to happen.
The Holy Spirit of God must come. He must come. And as He brooded
over this, that means He come and moved over it. And that brood
means like a hen setting on chickens to hatch them out to give life.
And God comes and broods over that soul, that darkness and
that without form, that voidness, that life that don't exist. And that darkness, the Spirit
of God comes and moves over that dark soul. And when He broods
over that soul and broods over it and brings life out of it,
the Spirit of God, when He's come, He'll give life, and He
broods over that dark soul, and look what happens when He comes
out of it. And oh, and God said, when that Holy Ghost begins to
blow, let there be light! God turns on the light. The Spirit
of God comes, and God said, let there be light. And you remember
that verse of Scripture where it said this, He says, that God,
as God commanded the light to shine out of darkness, He has
shined in our hearts to give the light, the revelation of
the knowledge of God and His glory, whereas in Jesus Christ,
His blessed Son. Oh, my. And so there we go, and
look what happens. And God saw the light. That light
was the light of men, the Lord Jesus Christ. That light is what
He brought to us. That life is what He brought
to us. And God saw the light, and it was good. Oh, it's good. And when you say, yes, it's good
that He turned the light on, yes, ain't it good that He brought
us the knowledge of God in Christ and turned on that light? God
saw the light, thought that Christ was good. And now watch this.
And God divided the light from the darkness. God sets His people
apart from the rest of this world. We were in darkness because they
were. But he brought the light. And let me tell you something
about that. God's the one who does the dividing. God is the
one who will either give a man light or leave him in darkness.
Man can talk about his will, he can talk about his rights,
he can talk about his power, he can talk about his morality,
he can talk about his self-sufficiency, he can talk about all the things
that he can do. But one thing he can't do, he
cannot give himself light. The Spirit of God looted over
that, and God said, let there be light. Only God can do that. And boy, when He does that, He
creates life. And then look what it says. And God divided the
light from the darkness. Oh, He separates us, and God
called the light day. Oh, no, I didn't know you talked
about children of the day. Paul talked about the Thessalonians
being children of the day, children of the light. And then there's
the children of the darkness, the night. We're not of them
who dwell in the dark and dwell in darkness. We're children of
light. We're children of day. And so we have here in chapter
3 through chapter 6, we have man's absolute and utter ruin.
Man's absolute and utter ruin. You know, the fact that God made
Adam and put him in the guards of Eden, left him in the Garden
of Eden, perfect paradise. And for those days from Adam,
when Adam fell, when Adam sinned, and we'll get to Adam here, but
I'll tell you, when Adam sinned, how did sin come into this world?
How did sin get into this world? Through one man. You can look
at that for yourself in Romans 5, 7, or, excuse me, 5, 12. For by one man, sin entered into
this world. Death passed upon all men. Why?
For all have sinned. All have sinned. Where do we
all sin at? We sin in it. That's why we're sinners. And
our children are sinners, and our grandchildren are sinners.
All this unclean thing can do is produce another unclean thing.
So when Adam failed, when he disobeyed God, when the serpent
came into the garden and deceived Eve, and they took of that fruit
of the knowledge of tree of good and evil, and they failed, and
God Himself... Now listen to me, talking about
salvation, and talking about grace, and free grace, and sovereign
grace, Here's Adam, he sinned against God. People say, you
know, all we've got to do is convince men to come. When Adam
fell, you'd have thought the first thing he'd have done would
have been run into God. Now he says, I'll go back to
God. I'll go to God. God will have mercy on me. God
will forgive me. God will receive me. God will
have mercy. But no, no, what did he do? He found out he was
naked. He was naked. God brought him
out of the dust and he was naked. But know what did he do? He got
himself, his wife, a fig leaf, and got himself a fig leaf, and
they took some bark or something, made him some fig leaves, covered
their nakedness. God came walking in the cool
of the day. He said, Adam, where are you? Where are you? Where
are you? Adam said, I'm afraid. What are you afraid
of, Adam? Well, I'm naked. Who told you
he was naked? Who told Adam he was naked? He'd
been naked from the day God made him. Now all of a sudden he's
naked and he knows it. What happened to all that? What
happens to the day? And this happens to every one
of us who are saved by the grace of God. God brings us to the
place where we see we're naked before God. Where we see that
we are absolutely transparent and naked without anything before
God Himself. Now, ain't that right? Do you
understand that? But by me, we ain't got nothing. We ain't got nothing unacceptable
to God. We ain't got no clothes on. God
looks at us, and He sees us the way we are. And that's how sin
entered this world. And death passed upon us. You
know why men die? Because of sin. Because of sin. And then look over here in Genesis
chapter 5 with me. And we'll see, from Adam to Noah,
Men lived for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years. And I
believe why they lived for hundreds of years at that time was for
two reasons. For God to cause the race to
live a long time so they could multiply and replenish the earth.
And secondly, is so that men, they hadn't felt that the curse
hadn't started like it has on us, that these men that the curse
took so long for it to take effect as far as as the body failing
and men failing, and Kurt did those kinds of stuff, it didn't
come on so quickly because it was so soon after the creation. But men lived for hundreds of
years, and we have no idea how far they went in their creation
and the things that they've done. But we do know this, that the
longer they lasted, the more wicked they became. Look what
it says here in verse 5. Genesis 6 and 5. And God saw,
talked about God seeing, and God saw that the wickedness of
man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the
thought of his heart was only evil continually. In the margin,
it says, the whole imagination, not only the imagination, but
also the purposes and the desires. Their purpose and their desire
was only evil continually. Now that's what God said about
the human race. And then in verse 6 it said,
And it repented the Lord, that he had made man on the earth,
and it grieved him at his heart. And God said, I will destroy
man whom I have created from off the face of the earth, both
man and beast, and the creeping things and the fowls of the earth.
It repented me that I have made man. So God said, he's going
to send a flood. He's going to send a flood. And
oh, beloved, and you know what happened? Look what happens down
there in verse 8. But Noah found grace in the eyes
of the Lord. You know, and when God saw this
wickedness, saw this sinfulness and grieved him in his heart,
there was, you know, Abel, as far as we can tell, Of course,
Adam and Eve, when God had clothed them from their nakedness and
that, we'll get to it. But few believe God, following
the example of Abel. And I mean the whole human race.
And that's what the Scriptures tell us. As it was in the days
of Noah, it'll be in the days of Christ's coming. As it was
in the days of Solomon and Gomorrah. And could you imagine it hardly
being any worse than it is right now? I'll tell you something,
Bill. We're going to talk just a little
bit here, man. When they repealed this, don't ask, don't tell.
I don't even know why they brought it up. In the military, homosexuals
can now serve openly in the military, and there ain't nothing they
can do about it. Two women can be together, and the army and
military can't do a thing about it. Two men can be together.
Men can dress as women if they want to, if that's their thing,
and there ain't nothing they can do about it. And not all
that, but when they repeal that now, but since they repealed
that, they can easily actually have sex with animals, which
the Bible forbids, and ain't nothing the military can do about
it. Now, if you think that we ain't in the days of Sodom and
Gomorrah and in the days of Noah before the flood, you think we
ain't there? When our government, our government,
the princes, the powers, and the dominions, sanctions, such
things, and puts laws into effect to let things like that happen?
You think we ain't on the verge of the end? And if you say anything
about it, you're the one that's the nut now. And that's what
we're talking about here. You say they saw the wickedness
of man that's on the evil continually? If God saw that then, imagine
what He sees right now. You think He sees it any different
now? Only thing is, is that the only reason the Word of God ain't
destroyed this world now is because He has got a few Noahs on the
face of the earth. And when it comes time to come,
He's going to shut that door and hope this world's gone. But
that's what I'm talking about. This is what's happened. There's
only one exception out of this whole earth. Now, let me tell
you something. Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Now,
Noah was no different than anybody else in that generation. God
didn't look down and say, Noah was a good man trying to live
right, trying to be righteous, trying to do the right thing.
No, no. Noah was just as wicked as anybody
else. What made the difference was
God made the difference. Grace made the difference. Grace, God says, I'm going to
take Noah, and I'm going to give him grace. I'm going to favor
him. He ain't worth it. He's not got
no goodness, he's not got no morality, he's dead, he's depraved,
he's like everybody else, but I'm going to give him grace! And he did. And then, beloved,
and then in Genesis 11, of course, you all read this at your own
leisure, but there was the tarab babble, talking about these things
where God, the tarab babble, and the whole earth was one language
and one speech, it said, They journeyed from the east and they
found a plain. They said, let's make us some
bricks, let's go up to heaven. And look what it says in verse
6 down here. Genesis 11, 6, And the Lord said,
Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language. And this they began to do, and
now nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined
to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language,
that they may not understand one another's speech. So the
Lord scattered them abroad from thence, upon the face of all
the earth, and they left off to build a city. Therefore is
the name of it called Babel." Confusion, because the Lord did
there confound the language of all the earth, and from thence
did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
So there we have, we have the ruin, we have the creation, We
have God's flood, and then, beloved, and you know, in Genesis 3.15,
I've got a little ahead of myself, but in Genesis 3.15, we have
the promise of a Redeemer, of a Savior. When God told Adam,
the serpent, in a curse, that I'll put him between thy seed
and the seed of the woman, and everything in this Bible from
Genesis 3.15 has one goal. And that's to preserve that image,
that seed, that line, and that knowledge of Christ, the seed
of the woman, all the way through the Scriptures until He comes
in this earth. And now let me tell you, that's
why we deserve God's wrath, just like those people did. But God
made a promise. He made a promise to His blessed
Son before the world ever began. Before Adam ever fell into sin,
God made a covenant. God made a covenant of grace,
and He gave a people to Christ in that covenant of grace, and
thy Lord Jesus Christ, through the seed of the woman, would
come into this world, and as the seed of the woman, He would
redeem us from the curse and everything that's against us
and contrary to us. And that's why Christ stood as
the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. Adam's sin did
not surprise God. God already had a Savior for
Adam before he ever fell. He had a Savior for Abel before
he ever fell, before he ever sinned, before he ever died.
And that's why he said to Job, he said, God is gracious unto
him. Deliver him from going down to
the pit. Let me tell you something else that's in the book of Genesis. Substitution. Substitution. There's ruling that all who bless
God does grace. Noah found grace in the eyes
of the Lord. And so, oh, we got grace. Instead of getting last,
we got grace. God gave us grace in Christ before
the foundation of the world. Then we have substitution. And
you know where that substitution's at? You've heard it many times.
In Genesis 22, when Abraham... God says, take your son, your
only son, and take him up on the mount that I shall show thee.
And there, deliver him up to me. And they started up that
mount. And they had wood for the fire,
they had a knife, and they even had some fire with them, tearing
fire with them. And they started up that mountain. Isaac had the wood on him, to
confine our Lord Jesus, bearing His own cross. The father had
the knife, symbolizing justice, and he had the fire that he's
going to consume that sacrifice with. And they started up that
mountain. And Isaac said, Father, we've
got the wood, we've got the fire, where's the lamb? Where's the
sacrifice? Where's the lamb? And Abraham
says, My son, God will provide himself a lamb. And he called
that place and called the Lord, Jehovah-Jireh, the Lord will
provide. And God provided for us a substitute. One, when they took Isaac and
put him on that altar, God said, stay your hand, Abraham. Abraham
looked, and there was a ram. That's a male lamb. A male sheep. And he took that ram, and he
put him in the place, in the stead, his son Isaac. And God
took his son, a male without spot, without blemish. And He
took him and put us in our place. And He said, Abraham and Isaac
worshiped the Lord there that day. And we worship God only
in Christ, in Him crucified, risen, and resurrected. And they
come off of that mountain, and before they ever started, he
said, I'm the latter going yonder to worship the Lord, and we'll
be back. He knew that if God took that
boy, God was going to raise him from the dead. Because why? All
the promises that God gave Abraham dwelt in that boy Isaac. And
all the promises that God gave this being you dwelt in our Lord
Jesus Christ. All right. God always accomplishes
His purpose of grace. Ain't nobody going to stop Him.
Everything's just instruments in His hand. How come there was
a ram there? How'd it get there? How'd it
get caught in that thicket? Men go out hunting these big
old bighorn rams all the time. These big, I think they call
them, they've got some bighorn mountains, they call them. Gary
says, it's as well we call it the bighorn state or something.
Well, they got them big horned mountains, you know, they got
them big horned sheep, you know, and rams up around them mountains
and fellows, and they'll go hunting for days and days getting one
of them rascals. But God Him gave, He gave us His blessed
Son. Put Him in our stand. Oh, listen. Adam's fall didn't
take God by surprise, but all it did was open the way for us
to be redeemed by His blessed blood. You know that Lot, when
he got drunk and had incest with his daughters, where his daughters
had incest with him, that it was through that incest and through
the Moabites that Ruth came into Jerusalem and came into Bethlehem
and became David's grandmother. And Christ come through Jesse
and David and through Ruth, who is a Moabitess, and Ruth is a
descendant of our Lord Jesus Christ. And oh, God uses instruments,
and we see that in Judas' sin, and oh my, in Joseph's ill treatment
of his brother, God uses all these things. But let me give
you quickly six men here, that the Scriptures tell us about,
six men. Now, the whole history of the book of Genesis is a period
of 4,000 years, 4,000 years. Man's been on this earth for
6,000 years, 4,000 years, from Genesis to the end of it. the period of Genesis, 4,000
years. It revolves around six men. And
they're the representative of the whole experience of grace.
If you remember the lives of these six men, you'll understand
Genesis. And you follow them. First, there's
Adam. Adam. He shows our ruin, our
depravity, our sin, and our desperate need of grace. And he was a type
of our Savior because he was a figure, a type of him that
was to come, the Lord Jesus Christ. And then secondly, I've done
deal with that where it's for one man centered into the world.
You take these home with you and keep them and look them over
yourself. And then not only was it Adam,
then the next one we find is Noah. You know what, look back
over here in Genesis 6. Let me show you something about
Noah. Genesis 6, something about Noah. Real actually in Genesis
5. Noah. This shows us our salvation in
Christ, our redemption in Christ, our salvation from the wrath
of God in Christ, and the judgment of God in Christ. As God called
Noah, Noah built an ark, told him to make him an ark of gopher
wood, and him and his family got in that ark, and they were
saved from the flood. And that flood was the wrath
of God. And they were saved from the judgment of God, the wrath
of God, the justice of God, in that ark. in that ark. And God said, Shut to the door. But look what it says back up
here in verse 29 of Genesis 5. When Lamech lived a hundred and
eighty years, and he begat a son, he called his name Noah. And
watch what it says, This saying shall comfort us concerning our
work and the toils of our hands, because of the ground which the
Lord hath cursed. Now, if you've got it in the
margin, Noah means rest or comfort. And that's what we have through
Noah. And that Noah means rest and
comfort. And they found rest and comfort
in that ark. And, beloved, we find rest and
comfort in our Lord Jesus Christ and Him alone. And when that
ark, beloved, the flood water became to fall on it, and this
is something that everybody needs to understand, that when God
caused the flood to come, And I'll give you several reasons
about the flood. But when that flood came, that
was the wrath of God. He said, I'm going to destroy
all things. And when that flood began to come, God said, come
thou into the ark. He didn't say go in. He said,
come in. That means that God's in there with them. Christ's
in there with them. There's only one way in, one
way out. One way to God, one way to God,
one way to Christ. To God, that's the Lord Jesus
Christ. He's the door. And, beloved, there was one window
up, and all the great thing you could see was spotless. Look
it up. But anyway, when that rain began
to fall, not one drop of it fell on Noah or his family. Not one
drop. You know why suddenly one drop
fell? Because that flood, that water represented, it wasn't
all a representation, it was the judgment of God. It had been
over to over 2,000, 2,500 years before the flood, before it ever
rained on the face of the earth. And so here they are, the rain
starts. And it's in that ark. That ark bore the judgment of
God. Bore the wrath of God. And beloved, we in our Lord Jesus
Christ, we bear, He bore the judgment of God. He bore the
wrath of God. And we'll never have to marry.
Never. Huh? And then let's not only Adam
and Noah, but what about Abraham? Abraham. You can find Abraham
from Genesis 12 on through. But Abraham shows our justification
by faith. Here was a man who lived by faith.
Everything that he had was given to him by God. There was not
any marriage in him. And God gave it to him, and he's
free in sovereign grace. He believed God, and it was imputed
to him for righteousness. God gave Abraham faith in Christ. He looked to Christ, and he looked
for Christ, and God ordered every step of his life. And eight times,
eight times, you find Abraham's faith dramatically, dramatically
retracted. And that's why it says we walk
in the footsteps of that faith of our father Abraham. So if
you understand something about Abraham, And then Isaac, Abraham's
son. That tells us about a supernatural
birth. There was no flesh involved in
his birth. Abraham was 100 years old, Sarah
was 90. God had promised him they were
going to have a son. They waited and waited and waited and waited
and waited, and when they got to where it was impossible for
them to have any children, God gave them a son. And not only to give him this
son, this supernatural son, this son by a miracle birth. Beloved,
he made him the heir. Abraham said, this is my heir.
This is the one into whom I give everything. And then not only
that, but Abraham sent and got him a bride and had a bride brought
to him. That shows us that Christ is the miracle, the supernatural,
one who comes from God. Miracle birth, born of a virgin.
And not only that, beloved, but God hath appointed him heir of
all things. And he gave him a bride. He gave
him me and you. Oh, beloved. And I tell you,
he was so beloved of his father. And, oh, behold, what manner
of love the father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called
the sons of God. And then Jacob. Let me say a
little about Jacob. Abraham. Adam, Noah, Abraham,
Isaac, Jacob. Father, son, Jacob, grandson,
Isaac's son, Jacob and Esau. But Jacob shows us how God saves
His people, comes to them when they are left alone Nowhere else
to turn to, and God came, and you can find this in Genesis
32, God got a hold of him. Of course, he made a nation out
of him, but God got a hold of him, and laid hold on him, and
changed his name, changed his world, changed his life, changed
his character, and set him apart. Before God ever got a hold of
Jacob, he was a cheat. He was a deceiver. A deceiver. Everybody who'd come in contact
with him, he'd beat them. He left his father-in-law down
there with the sorest... His father-in-law had the best
cattle he'd buy in the country. But after Jacob got through with
it, he had the sorest cattle there ever was, and Jacob left
with the best, because he... Oh, God blessed him. But anyway,
he thought he was a man who could live on his own wisdom and wits,
and get all he desired by his own efforts. And he deceived
almost everybody who dealt with him, but he himself, ended up
being deceived in himself. And he's a picture of the purpose
and power and the grace of God when God laid hold on him. And
God's got to lay hold on us and change us and change our walk
and make us new Christians and give us a new name. And he says,
because I am the Lord, I change not. Therefore, you sons of Jacob
are not consumed. And then last of all, I told
you six men. Adam, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob,
and Joseph. When you read through Genesis,
you'll find these six characters. And Joseph shows us what God
has in the future for us, and he's a picture of the Lord Jesus
Christ. There are also many pictures
of Christ in Joseph, but he's also a picture of every believer
who is beloved of God himself. And he lived, Joseph lived in
constant conflict, but he was raised up, God raised him up
from the darkness of prison to the glory of Pharaoh's throne
to rule and to reign. Christ was brought up out of
prison and set on his throne now. And just as Christ sat on
his throne and Joseph was raised up and set on, and Joseph says,
now when you leave here, take me with you. And, beloved, one
of these days Christ is going to come and take us with Him,
and we're going to leave this old world, leave this old Egypt
here. Even if it's nothing but bones,
He's going to come, put flesh on the bones, and take us all
to God. And, oh, beloved, that's the message of Genesis. I hope
that it made some sense to you, and you got an outline of it,
and you can read it and go through it yourself and follow it a little
bit. But that's next week. We'll try Exodus, where the children
of Israel was brought out of Egypt. And I'll tell you, that's
just hitting high spots. I mean hitting the real high
spots. And I hope it's a blessing to you.