But tonight I'm going to undertake
a huge task. I've thought about it, prayed
about it for a long time, tried to prepare for it for a long,
long time. If the Lord will enable me to do what I want to do and
allow me to live maybe another year, it will be a blessing to
you, I'm sure. I want to go through the entire
volume of Holy Scripture, book by book. Find the message of
each book, show it to you, and show its relation to the whole
book. Now that'll be the easy part. Here's the tough part.
I want to do it one book in every message. Shelby said, you mean
you're going to preach on the whole book of Genesis tonight?
I said, I'll go home and fix a lunch. We won't be here that
long, but I want us to go through the whole Bible, book by book,
one book each week. And we'll begin in Genesis, of
course. the book of beginnings. And what
I hope to do in this series of messages is give you a zoom lens
view of the Holy Scriptures. We'll look at book after book,
one at a time, and I trust the Lord will enable us to see clearly
the message of this book, from beginning to end, is Jesus Christ
and Him crucified. I trust He will use these messages
to enable you and me to grasp more fully the whole truth of
God, the whole of divine revelation. Let's begin in Genesis 1, beginning
at verse 1. In the beginning, God created
the heaven and the earth. And the earth was, that word
was quite literally ought to be became. It's almost universally
used and translated became, seldom is it translated was. The earth
became without form and void, and darkness was upon the face
of the deep, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the
waters, and God said, Let there be light, and there was light."
Now I'll show you this in a minute. This is a picture of redemption.
Now let's turn to the last chapter. Look at the last three verses
of the book. Genesis chapter 50, beginning of verse 24. And Joseph said unto his brethren,
I die, and God will surely visit you, and bring you out of this
land unto the land which he sware to Abraham, to Isaac, and to
Jacob. And Joseph took an oath of the
children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and you
shall carry up my bones from hence." So Joseph died being
110 years old. And they embalmed him and he
was put in a coffin in Egypt. Now this book opens with a picture
of redemption. And it closes with a promise
of redemption. And everything between Genesis
1-1 and Genesis 50-26 is all about either our desperate need
of redemption or God's marvelous method of redemption and grace
in Christ Jesus. Now, try to get some concept. of the miracle you hold in your
hand. This book, this book is the greatest standing wonder
in the universe. The Lord God in great mercy and
grace has given us his word in one blessed, holy, inspired volume
and he's given it to us in our language so that we have the
Bible given in our language to pick it up and read it and see
what God says concerning himself, concerning us, and concerning
how he brings sinners to himself. He's given us his word to read. Read it, we should. It is a book
of tremendous, tremendous, infinitely tremendous value to our souls. Now, folks say, well, how do
you know this is the word of God? For those folks, I have
nothing to say, but for you, let me give you some things that
will help you. One of the most important, one of the most powerful,
perhaps the most unanswerable evidence of the inspiration of
the Bible is its total unity. One message runs through the
pages of this book, just one message, and that message is
redemption by the blood of Christ. One person is portrayed, prophesied,
presented, and proclaimed throughout this book. That person is the
Lord Jesus Christ. Now, this book, however, the
Word of God, that Word which he says he is exalted above all
his holy name, the Word of God was written over a period of
hundreds of years. Hundreds of years. Written under
tremendously diverse circumstances. written by many, many different
men who lived in different ages on different continents, men
who didn't know one another, men who didn't have any plan
for them by which to write the book. And yet, all of them wrote
that one message of redemption and wrote of that one person,
the Lord Jesus Christ, and they wrote without any errors, without
any contradictions, and in God's good providence, he put the whole
book together for us right here. Now that's astounding. How on
earth can you explain that? How can you explain that? There's
not but one way to explain it. God did it. That's the only thing that makes
any sense. Holy men of old spoke as they
were moved by the Spirit of God. All scripture is given by inspiration
of God, God breathed, so that men Writing the volume, these
men were just natural, ordinary, sinful men and women just like
you and me. But they were men who were inspired
of God to write His Word. And writing His Word, they spoke
and wrote that which God the Holy Spirit deliberately, specifically,
moved, directed, and saw to it that they wrote. Now, when you
read the book, You can certainly distinguish the different characters
of the men. You can distinguish something
of their different backgrounds. When you read Peter's writings,
he doesn't write like Paul. When you read the writings of
James, he doesn't write like John. They are different men,
different personalities. How can you explain that? It
looks like if they were all inspired by the Holy Spirit, if everything
was written exactly by the dictates of God the Holy Spirit, then
surely there must be some unity even in their personality. Not
at all. have you to sit down, every one of you, and just write
my name and address. Don Fortner. Give you the letters.
Give you the words and the numbers, exactly what they are. Spell
them out for you. And you sit down and write them
all out. And you pile them up right here. There's not any two
that would look alike. Not any two. Because your writing
reflects something of you as well. But the words written are
exactly what were dictated to you. That's how God calls men
to write his words. Now, we are so accustomed to
seeing the Bible, we have them all over our houses, and I hope
accustomed to reading it, that we seldom think about it. I don't know that I ever have
given much thought prior to preparing this message to the antiquity
of Holy Scripture. Have any idea how old this book
is? Just how far back it reaches? There was a man known to historians
by the name of Herodotus. He was a Greek philosopher and
teacher. He lived 300 years before the
coming of Christ. He's been called the father of
history because his was the first written history that's been preserved
for us. Now that's an old, old history. 300 years before Christ. But what we're reading tonight,
Moses wrote And the next four books of the Bible, the Pentateuch,
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Moses wrote those,
finished his work, and had been in his grave for a thousand years
before Herodotus was born. This is an old book, and yet
it's as fresh as this morning's newspaper. I don't know about
you, but when I read through the Scriptures, and I read about
Adam and Abel, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Read about Noah and Lot
and Joseph and his brethren. Somehow as I read their lives,
the more acquainted I am with their lives, the more I tend
to think of them as these are men that I used to know. mingle their lives with ours,
and mingle our lives with theirs, so that we seem to have so much
in common with them, far more in common with them than with
the folks who are our blood relatives. How come? Because that's the
way God intends it. Now, the book of Genesis was
more, however, than merely a history book. If it were just a book
of history, If all it was was a record of facts with regard
to creation and facts with regard to the early lives of early men,
facts with regard even to God's dealings with early men, if that's
all it was, it would really have no influence and be of no significance
to us. That's perhaps one reason why
folks can memorize facts about the Bible, facts about the written
word of God, and they'd have no influence on them, have no
significance to them. Because it's just facts, like
facts in the newspaper. Or, well, maybe we shouldn't
use newspaper, not many facts in there. Like facts in a history
book, if you can find a good one. But this is not just a history
book. The book of Genesis was written
to convey to us a message. One specific message. I write a lot of letters, correspond
with a lot of people every day. And always, Always, and I may
mention the children, I may mention the grandchildren, I may mention
something about the weather here in Kentucky or something about
the weather in California. But always when I write, I have
one specific thing I wish to convey. That's the purpose of
writing. You sit down and write a letter,
you want to convey one specific thing. And as we read the book
of Genesis, and indeed every book in the Bible, It conveys
one specific message. Now let me give you the message
of Genesis in one sentence, and then I'll show it to you several
places. Here's the message. Man without Christ. Who are you talking about? You
who are without Christ. Man without Christ is utterly
meaningless. Insignificant. Helpless, vain,
inadequate, useless. Every man and every woman without
Christ lives in the continually increasing frustration of the
realization of that fact. Meaningless, useless. vain, helpless,
inadequate, never finding satisfaction, never finding fulfillment, never
finding peace, never finding joy. All of those things that
he calls satisfaction, peace, fulfillment, joy, all of them
are like a puff of wind. You just get it and hold it in
your lungs for just a few seconds and then it's gone. That's all.
As I've told you so many times, the book of Genesis is the book
of beginnings. The word Genesis means beginnings. And this is
the message with which the book of God begins. Let me show it
to you in three sections of this book. Chapters 1 and 2 deal with
creation. Chapters 3 through the first
part of chapter 6 deal with ruin. And then the rest of the book
from the middle of chapter 6 to chapter 50 deal with restoration
or redemption. All right? First chapters 1 and
2. Our adequacy, our inadequacy, our insufficiency, our insignificance
is seen in this fact. We would have no existence at
all apart from Christ. He's our creator. Now look at
this first two verses. This is what the Holy Spirit
tells us in these first two verses. All things were created by Him
and for Him and He's before all things and by Him all things
consist. Here in Genesis 1, in the beginning, God created the
heaven and the earth. Like everything that God does,
like everything that comes from God, The heaven and the earth were
spectacularly perfect. Perfect. Perfect. The original
creation, the pristine beauty of that creation, we have no
concept of. It was beautiful, glorious, perfect. That was the way we were in the
beginning. Have you ever tried to contemplate
What kind of man Adam must have been before the fall? What kind
of woman Eve must have been before the fall? Perfect. Perfect in
body. Perfect in mind. Perfect in heart. Perfect in soul. Absolutely without
fault, without failure, without weakness. Absolutely without
sin. Perfect. I'm not talking about
just spiritually perfect or morally, righteously perfect. I'm talking
about the perfection of the entire being of that man, Adam. And
then something happened. That man into whose nostrils
God had breathed the breath of life so that he became a living
soul, God looked on him and said he was very good. And then, look
at the next line, and the earth became without form and void. Something happened. Something
happened. I don't even pretend to know
what happened. Perhaps this refers to the fall
of Satan. Lucifer lifting up his heart
in pride, saying, I'll take over the God business, I'll take over
the throne of God, I'll be as the most high, I will myself
become God, was cast down to the earth And the fall of Satan
had far-reaching consequences, so that the earth, as God originally
created it, fair, beautiful and perfect, became without form
and void. And darkness was upon the face
of the deep. Now that's a picture of the whole
human race since the fall of our father Adam. God created
man upright and sought out many inventions. Through the fall
of our father Adam, a fall that had far-reaching consequences,
far more deep, extensive-reaching consequences than we have yet
imagined. That fall of Adam reaches to
the whole of the human race, and reaches through the whole
scope of time in all parts of the world, in all parts of human
existence. And this is the sum of it all.
Darkness is upon the face of the deep. Men come into this
world born in darkness. They live all their lives groping
about in darkness. Darkness covers the earth and
gross darkness the people until God does something. The scripture
tells us, and the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. The Lord God Almighty steps in
to the darkness and brings light. And until the light shines in
the darkness, the darkness will never see light. Until God steps
into a man's life, until God steps into a man's soul, until
God steps into you, you can never see light. You will always grope
about in darkness. Now that's how the book begins.
Christ is our creator both in the physical realm and in the
spiritual. He is the creator of the first
creation and he is the creator of the new creation. The next
section is in chapters 3-6. Here we see something about this
horrible ruin that was brought upon the earth. The inadequacy
and insignificance of our race is displayed in the fact that
we are a fallen, ruined, sinful, cursed race whose only hope Our
only hope of eternal life, and that's the only life there is,
our only hope of eternal life, our only hope of restoration
is the free grace of God in Jesus Christ the Lord. That's the message
of chapter 3 down to the first part of chapter 6. During those
days from Adam to Noah, men lived for hundreds of years. of years,
hundreds of years. They didn't start getting old
until they were hundreds of years old. They were young men in their
old age. What opportunities they must
have had. I'm certain we have no idea how
brilliant, how advanced the people who walked on the earth prior
to the flood had become. That is brilliant knowledgeable
in all things pertaining to the earth, in all things pertaining
to the physical universe around them, in all things pertaining
to carnal knowledge. But when we read what God has
to say about that brilliant, highly developed generation,
this is how God speaks. Look at chapter 6, verse 5. God saw that the wickedness of
man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the
thoughts of his heart, what a description, every imagination of the thoughts
of his heart was only evil. He never had a good thought about
anything, not before God. Not one good thought, much less
dead. And that continually. And it
repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and grieved
him at his heart. God Almighty expresses himself
as a man who has brought forth a son that has wreaked havoc
in his house, and he's grieved at his heart. And the Lord said,
I'll destroy a man whom I've made. I've created from the face
of the earth both man and beast, and the creeping thing, and the
fowls of the air, for it repeteth me that I've made him. Wish he
had never been here." The fact is, few believed God. Few followed
the example of Abel. Few knew anything at all about
the faith of Adam. Few experienced the grace of
God. Indeed, the entire human civilization
when it had reached the highest point of development, when human
civilization had reached its highest achievements, when it
had reached its greatest potential. I'm talking about the greatest
possible potential of man had been reached by the time we get
to Genesis chapter 6. The highest elevation of creation. The Lord
God speaks of the whole race as a massive iniquity. a running
sore of corruption whose violence covered the earth. There wasn't
a single exception, not a single exception, except one. And that
was an exception God had made. Look at verse 8. But Noah found
grace in the eyes of the Lord. Now, let's look at chapter 6
verse 8 through chapter 50. And here we see something about
restoration and redemption. We are inadequate, insignificant,
meaningless vanity. But blessed be his holy name. He who is our God is infinitely
adequate. As the Apostle Paul put it, When
he was explaining exactly what I've been talking to you about
in this book, where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. Now
that's the message of the rest of the book of Genesis. Man chose
sin. That was man's choice. It always
has been. It always will be. That's the
nature of man. But before ever Adam chose sin,
God Almighty had chosen to save somebody. Man broke God's covenant
in the garden, but before ever man rebelled, the Lord God had
made a covenant on behalf of chosen sinners that can never
be broken. That covenant was typified by
God's covenant with Noah when he put his bow in the sky and
said, I'm not going to destroy the earth like this again. That
covenant was typified when God made his covenant with Abraham
and said, I'm going to give through your loins a seed through whom
all the nations of the earth will be blessed. And the seed
that is the seed of Abraham is Jesus Christ the Lord and God's
people in him. Man, I started to say was, that's
not true. Every man by nature, Rex, every
man, every woman by nature, all of us, man is filled with and
motivated by, in all his decisions, in all his choices, in all his
actions, man is filled with and motivated by his utter hatred
of God Almighty. That will explain a little bit
of madness in this race, won't it? The natural heart is enmity
against God. That's what the book says. But
God, God, God Almighty, is filled
with and motivated by, in all his thoughts, in all his choices,
in all his deeds, God Almighty is filled with and motivated
by mercy, love, and grace toward his people in Christ. We deserve God's wrath, but God
promised all the blessedness of his covenant to his chosen
seed. And he found a way to give us that blessedness, and yet
maintain his holiness, his justice, and his truth, with no compromise
of his character, so that he may be both a just God and a
Savior. And that way is substitution
portrayed on the mount in Genesis 22, when Abraham goes up to worship
God. And he takes his son up to the
mount. And he said, I and the lad are going to go yonder and
worship God, and we're going to come back again. And Isaac
took the wood and the fire, and they started up the mountain.
And Isaac was a well-taught boy. He said, Daddy, we've got the
wood, and we've got the fire, but where is the lamb? We can't
worship God without blood. We can't worship God without
a sacrifice. We learned that from Adam. We can't do it. And
Abraham said, My son, God will provide himself a lamb for a
burnt offering. And as Isaac was stretched out
on the altar, and Isaac had to die. But he didn't die. God says he did. Abraham received
his son from the dead. He didn't really kill him, but
in his heart he did. That means he really did. Isaac had to die,
and you too, Lindsey Campbell. But blessed be God, there was
a ram caught in the thicket. who was taken and laid on the
altar in Isaac's place, and the blood of that ram was given in
the place of Isaac. And Isaac and Abraham worshiped
God acceptably." That's Christ the Lord, God, the Lamb, our
substitute. That's how God saved sinners.
Now, be sure you get hold of this. Be sure you get this. If there's anything taught with
distinct clarity in these 50 chapters, it is this. God Almighty
always accomplishes his purpose of grace without the least hindrance. Nothing hinders him, nothing
prevents him, nothing. When Joseph finally made himself
known to his brethren, he was about to die, and his They were
just dead sure that Joseph was going to leave orders for them
to be killed when he was gone. They came to him in terror and
they were trying to explain and justify and apologize, whatever
you have to do to save your skin, and Joseph said, boy, you don't
need to talk anymore. He said, as for you, you meant
it to me for evil, but God meant it for good. I'm in the place
of God. What's he saying? You with your
evil plots and schemes and designs intended to destroy me, but my
God all along intended to take your evil plots and ploys and
designs to bring me to this place to save much people alive. I'm
in the place of God. Adam's fall, boy, looks like
everything's turned upside down now. No, no. I'm not going to begin to try
to explain this. I just know it so. Adam's fall made way for
the second Adam to come. Adam's fall made way for redemption
to be accomplished. Adam's fall, by God's good providence,
made way for him to show forth his glory. Noah and his sons. Oh, what a horrid, horrid thing
we see in his son Ham. But there on that black background,
God Almighty displays the wonder of His grace, declaring the ultimate
salvation of all His people. Lot and his daughters, his drunkenness,
their incest, horrid crimes, horrid crimes
against God and man, horrid crimes against themselves. But out of
the very incestuous relationship of Lot and his daughters, Messiah
comes into the world. Judah goes down and takes Tamar,
takes her as a prostitute, and out of that union comes the Lord
Jesus Christ into the world. God always accomplishes his purpose
without the least hindrance, though hell should rage against
him. If you read this book carefully,
the whole history of the book of Genesis, a period of 4,000
years, a little more, the whole history of the book of Genesis
revolves around six men, just six men. If you can get in your
mind the lives of these six men and what God reveals to us by
these six men, you're going to get the message of this book.
The first one is Adam. Of course, I've already shown
you he displays the ruin, the private tent. sin of our race,
our need of a substitute and Savior, our need of grace. And
then Noah. Noah found grace in the eyes
of the Lord and he displays redemption. The Lord God said Noah built
an ark. Come into the ark. God shut him in. God poured out
his wrath on that ark. And Noah came through the storm
of God's wrath untouched. Because Christ our substitute
is our ark, upon whom God has poured out his wrath in our room
instead. And then Abraham. Abraham throughout the scriptures
is held before us as the imminent example of faith. Justification
by faith particularly. Abraham believed God and it was
imputed to him for righteousness. He was a man who lived by faith.
Everything he had, God had given to him, not by any merit in him,
not by any effort on his part, but by his free grace. God chose
him, God called him, God revealed himself to him, God gave him
faith. God called Abraham to believe
him, and God ordered his every step. We're told of eight distinct
great trials. of Abraham's faith. And when you are tried, when
God tries your faith, when God puts you through the ranger to
prove you, you will find your experience in Abraham. The trial of faith is displayed
in Abraham remarkably. Abraham will show you what it
is to live in this world by faith and what it is to live in this
world as the friend of God. And then Isaac. Isaac exemplifies
sonship. Our relationship to God as his
own dear children. I thought about Isaac a good
bit today. I'd like to spend more time, but we're going to
get the whole book. If ever there was a boy who was spoiled, peppered,
petted by his father. If ever there was a boy who was
the apple of his daddy's eye, it was Isaac. He was Abraham's
son, preeminently so. But didn't Abraham have other
sons? Yeah, sort of. But Isaac was the apple of his
daddy's eye. Isaac was his son. For Isaac,
he had sacrificed any other, any other. In the glimpses we have in this
book of Isaac, we have a little idea of what it is, what it means
to be the darling of our Heavenly Father's heart. What a blessed message this is.
Our great God looks upon us, his children, in Jesus Christ,
his Son, as the darlings of his heart. But what about the angels? What about the Egyptians? What
about the Assyrians? What about this group or that
group? God said, I'll sacrifice any of them for you. Isaiah 43. Behold what manner of love the
Father hath bestowed on us. that we should be called the
sons of God. And then Jacob. He shows us how
God's sanctifying grace causes us to grow in the grace and knowledge
of our Lord Jesus Christ, even as we live in this world in this
body of flesh. Jacob was a rascal, a schemer. He was a man who thought he could
live by his own wits, by his own efforts. And he went out
trying to deceive everybody and ended up deceiving himself. But
Jacob was in the grip of God's grace. What a picture he is of
God's marvelous work of sanctification. Here's a man like us in our folly
attempting to live life by the energy of the flesh, led from
one place to another into various situations until at last we're
cornered in him being like Jacob, wrestling with the angel. And
there we discover God speaking to us, commanding us to acknowledge
your name, picky, deceitful, Jacob! And when Jacob surrenders,
I give up, God take over. God's broken his legs. And now
he walks with a limp the rest of his life, a symbol that he's
been broken by God Almighty. And he's never the same again.
Now he's a prince with God. His name's Israel. Oh, how I
thank God for the unbreakable grip of his grace upon the sons
of Jacob. And if it hadn't been for that,
I'd have been in hell a long time ago. You too. And even now,
that which keeps us in faith, that which keeps us in grace,
that which keeps us in divine favor, is that God Almighty holds
us in His hand and He will not let go. And Joseph. Joseph represents our ultimate
glorification. Here's a man, beloved of his
father. Oh, how he was loved of his father.
But maligned and mistreated and misrepresented by his brothers
all through his life, living in constant conflict, trial,
heartache, oppressed on every hand. But this man was suddenly
lifted from the dungeon and from bondage and from darkness and
from the lowest pit to the very throne of Pharaoh, made second
only to Pharaoh in the land of greatness. And that's what God's going to
do with us. He's going to set us as his sons on his throne
with his Son. And we'll look back over every experience, and over every foe, and over
every conflict, and over every region of hell. And we'll say
with complete complacency, satisfaction, and joy to the praise of God
on His throne, you meant it to me for evil. But God meant it
for good, to bring it to pass as it is this day, I'm in the
place of God. That's the message of the book. Man without Christ is utterly
sinful, helpless, inadequate, meaningless, useless, and vain. But blessed be God, there is
in Christ our God and Savior an infinite superlative adequacy
of mercy, grace, and love for our immortal souls. Okay now,
look here, don't quit yet, listen. Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound. How about you? May God make His
grace yours, for Christ's sake. Amen.