 Okay, we have started our recording once again, so we will get into the book of Genesis, before we do that, we have one pending verse which we read out but we didn't talk about it and that was Matthew chapter 23 verse 35. We saw that the Old Testament, the Hebrew Old Testament, the original Old Testament was arranged in a particular way. You had the Torah and then you had the prophetic books which are called the Neveim and you had the third section which was the historical writings and the poetic writings. That was the Kevtuveem and we saw that in this arrangement Chronicles will be your very last book. So it's what we saw. Now that is directly connected to what is mentioned over here in Matthew 23 verse 35. Jesus is speaking to the leaders and he's saying, you people are an unrepentant people. You know, every time the good news was brought to you, you chose to kill the person bringing the good news. So even the prophets, the prophets came to you and prophesied about how the Messiah will come, how he will deliver it and all you need to do from your side is repent and prepare your hearts. You refuse to do that. What was your response? He says to the people, you know, he says, what was your response? You killed the prophets who were sent. And so he says on this generation which is now living, you know, all the fending judgment which has been fending for centuries, all the people of God whom you have murdered, you and your ancestors because of the wrong attitude of your hearts. That judgment which has been waiting, it's going to be released now in your times is what he says. And so as he's talking about the judgment which will come upon them, this is what he says, these are the words that he uses. Jesus says, and so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth. From the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Barakiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. So Jesus is basically saying all these books of the Old Testament which give details about what you people did to the prophets. What is the first murder that is mentioned? It is the murder of Abel. Abel was righteous. Cain on the other hand was living in a way that did not please the Lord. And so God accepted the sacrifice of Abel, but God rejected the sacrifice of Cain because he was not living in a way which was honorable and acceptable to the Lord. And God says to him, he says, if you change your, you know, if you do what is right, will you not be accepted? So God is saying, you don't have to be angry and upset that I have shown favor to Abel. All you have to do is do what is right. If you do that, you also will be accepted. And so Cain instead of admitting his wickedness and repenting, he chooses to kill the righteous person instead. So right from that time, right from the beginning, you have the attitude of some people who will choose rebellion rather than repentance. Cain had a choice. He could either repent or he could rebel. He chose to rebel and he chose to murder righteous Abel. So it started off with that. And so in every generation, you would have people who chose to kill the righteous rather than repent of their evil ways. I just hope it's not someone trying to ask a question. Okay, so the very last murder of a righteous person, which is mentioned in the Old Testament. According to their arrangement of books is in the Second Chronicles, where it talks about the death of Zechariah. So the first book, the first murder, that would be Genesis chapter 4 verses 1 to 11. And the very last murder, which is mentioned in the Hebrew Old Testament, somewhere around the end of the Second Chronicles, that will be Second Chronicles 24 verses 20 to 22. Second Chronicles 24 verses 20 to 22. So once we understand how their books were arranged, how their Old Testament books were arranged, we get a clearer idea of why Jesus used that term from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah. He was basically talking about from the first murder in the Old Testament up to the last murder in the Old Testament of a righteous person. So the people chose to kill the righteous rather than repent of their sins. So we looked very briefly about the language of the Old Testament, the original Old Testament. And we looked at the arrangement of the books in the Old Testament. And we also looked at the portions which were given more importance during public readings, during festivals. So we just dwelt upon those three brief points as an introduction. Now we will move into our study of Genesis. The book of Genesis belongs to the first section which is your Torah. So the Torah is made up of five books and the very first one is Jesus. And now the word Genesis which we use, that is actually the heading, the name that was given to the book in the Latin translation of the Bible. In very early times when was it 1100s, 1200s, when they began to do translations of the Bible. When the Latin translation for the Latin Bible was done, at that time they gave each of the books a name. So these words, many of them actually make more sense if you know Latin, of course none of us know Latin. But that word Genesis basically means something that is being generated for the first time. It is coming into existence for the first time. So the word Genesis basically means the birth of something, the beginning of something. That's the word, that's the Latin word. So we use these Latin headings even today. So the book of Genesis is actually a book of many, many beginnings. If you look in your PDF, the notes which are posted online and also the copies which you have over here. It gives you a long list of all the beginnings which we find in the book of Genesis. It was the beginning of creation. There was no world in existence before that. For the first time, the entire world, the universe was created. The beginning of the universe is mentioned. The beginning of human beings, God created humans for the very first time. The beginning of the Sabbath, when did the Sabbath begin? Did it begin on the day when Moses said, thou shalt keep the Sabbath? Did the Sabbath actually begin on that day? Or did the Sabbath begin much before that? It says on the seventh day, God rested. And then when Moses is explaining why we people should follow the Sabbath or otherwise the Old Testament people should follow the Sabbath. At that time, Moses explains and he reminds them. Remember, on the seventh day, God rested from the creation process. That word rested basically means he stopped, he ended what he was doing. So that word rested is an old English word. It's not talking about rest and taking rest and sleeping. No, God was not tired. He was not trying to rest because he was tired. He rested in the sense he stopped. He ended what needed to be done. It was all complete and so he rested. He stopped from doing it. If I'm doing whitewashing of this entire hall, once I have finished the whitewashing of the entire hall, I will rest from my work. It doesn't mean that I'm tired. It means that I have finished and completed the task. And so in that sense, I have rested from it. So Moses reminds the people and says, remember on the seventh day, God rested from his work. That is the reason why we are celebrating the Sabbath. There was a significance for that. We will report it later when we are covering those portions. So there is a special significance which connects the Sabbath to the seventh day. In what other sense is Genesis the book of beginnings? It is the beginning of the institution of marriage. God created this institution of marriage. That is the beginning of marriage. It was also the beginning of the fall of sin. The beginning of sin we find in the book of Genesis. It was also the beginning of sacrifices because humans fell, because their sin, when God had to do something for them, he had to make a sacrifice on their behalf to forgive them. And so he introduces the whole system of sacrifices. So that was the beginning. Genesis is also the beginning of nations. And different nations came into existence for the first time in the book of Genesis. So in that sense, the book of Genesis is a book of many new beginnings. What are the main characters that we see in the book of Genesis? In the beginning, of course, we have Adam Eve and then you have Cain and Abel. And then you have a whole bunch of names which we can't remember. Noah stands out in our mind. Noah, he's one of the important characters that we remember. And then later you have again a whole bunch of people. And then we come to the chapters 12 onwards where we have the stories of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. So those characters we remember, they are the main characters that we remember from the book of Genesis. Now, when exactly was the book of Genesis written? If we look at 1 Kings chapter 6 verse 1, over there a little bit of information is given regarding date. So using that information, they try to calculate when the book of Genesis must have been written. So let's look at 1 Kings chapter 6 verse 1. If someone can read out 1 Kings chapter 6 verse 1. And it came to pass in the 418th year after the children of Israel had come out of the land of Egypt in the 4th year of Solomon's Zen over Israel in the month of Ziv, which is the second month that he began to build the house of the Lord. Here the dating has been given basically for when the temple construction work started, Solomon's temple, when Solomon began his temple construction work. But it also gives us some information about how many years after the Exodus this took place. What is the word Exodus? That's basically a word which means leaving from some place. Let us say that for some reason my family has been asked by the government to leave Bangalore and go away permanently. So when I and my family are leaving Bangalore, we will say we are making an Exodus from Bangalore. We will never come back over here. We are saying goodbye to this place forever and ever. So it's a very ancient big word Exodus. It basically means you are now leaving something permanently and going away. You are exiting from that place. So maybe if this Latin version was written in modern times, we would not call this Exodus. We would call it exit. They're exiting a place, leaving it, going away to a new place. That word Exodus basically means that. So from 1 Kings chapter 6 verse 1, we get to know that 480 years after the Exodus, this temple construction work begins. So using that for calculation, the scholars they try to calculate when Genesis might have been approximately written. And so depending on which commentary you're looking at, you'll probably get a slightly different date. But approximately sometime let us say 1500 BC, just to kind of round it off. Some people will say 1405 BC in your book. I think in your PDF it mentions 1486 BC. So approximately around that time is when the book of Genesis must have been written. Yeah, exactly. So that is when it was written. And it was written most probably by Moses. And why did God choose Moses to write it? Because Moses had very advanced writing skills. This is something that we see mentioned in the New Testament. Acts 7 verse 22 talks about Moses, talks about his academic background. Moses was not an uneducated person. He was a highly learned person. Acts 722 talks about that. If someone can read out Acts 722. And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of Egyptian and was mighty in words and deeds. Yeah, this is basically from the speech of Stephen. Stephen is giving them a brief history of their entire background. Israelite's background. And he's talking about the main things which happened. And so when he's talking about Moses, he says, Moses, he was such a learned man, but he chose to place God first. And so we get to know that Moses was educated in all the wisdom of Egypt. So he also would have learned how to write historical records. Because if you look at the Egyptian literature, when they talk about their kings, when they talk about their civilization, the way they wrote, they had a particular writing style of recording historical events. Moses would have learned all those skills during that time. If God had come to one of us sitting over here in the class and said, I want you to write down the first five books, you would not even know how to do it. I mean, how do you start writing something like that? Moses didn't have that problem. He had already been trained in such things. He knew how to write. And another thing which is interesting, I know it's a little beside the point, but just to touch upon that. This is what Stephen says about Moses. He says, Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in speech and action. He was a powerful speaker. What does Moses say about himself? He says, oh, I can't even talk. Lord, you please choose somebody else. Where does he make up all those excuses? That is in Exodus chapter four. It's where he says, no, no, Lord, don't make me go to the Pharaoh. I can't talk to the Pharaoh. I don't know how to talk, but history records, because they would have had access to all these historical books which talk about their people. So Stephen had read those books. So Stephen was aware of Moses, very learned, educated background. And so he records and says, Moses was skilled. He was powerful in speech and action. But when Moses is talking to God, he actually... So now we get to know why God became angry. It says in Exodus chapter four verse 14. It says, the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses. Why? Because Moses was giving all lame excuses. These were not genuine excuses. When he said, I'm slow of speech. I don't know how to talk. He was actually not speaking the truth about himself. He was scared to face Pharaoh. He was thinking that if I go and stand in front of Pharaoh, maybe all my words will escape from my mind. My mind will go blank. So it was more fear. It was not lack of education or lack of skill. And that's why God becomes angry and upset that he's not willing to do it. So Moses was skilled enough to record the first five books. In the same way, when he comes to the New Testament, God chooses a person who's very skilled in writing. If you look at many of the epistels, they were written by one single person, Paul. And Paul was trained by whom? He was trained under one of the best teachers available at that time, Gamaliel. So Gamaliel would have taught him how to talk, how to write, how to develop an argument and present your case in writing all these things you would have been taught. So in the Old Testament, you have Moses writing the first five books. In the New Testament, in the same way, you have a very skilled person writing many of the main doctrinal truths in the epistels. So Moses was a very skilled person and he would have known how to write these five books. Also, we see that he gives a lot of genealogies in the book of Genesis. It gives many records of the descendants of Adam and Eve. It gives a long list who was born after whom. And then you have a genealogy which talks about the descendants of Shem, the descendants of Ham. All these genealogical lists, from where did Moses get the information for all of these? So some of those records would have been maintained by the Israelite people, but some of those records also would have been there in the Egyptian library where they would have maintained a record of all the genealogies and things like that. So Moses who had access to the royal court would be familiar with these things. So it was easy for him to put down all these details in the first five books of the Old Testament. Coming to the three main divisions which we find in the book of Genesis. We can see that Genesis chapters 1 to 11 is one main section because this is basically where you have all the initial introductory events taking place. You have the creation, you have the fall, you have the flood, the Novas flood is there. All these things are mentioned in the first 11 chapters. So from chapter 3 onwards, sin starts growing, sin starts increasing. Till finally when you come to Genesis chapter 8, 9, the people have become so sinful that God is not pleased with them anymore and so God decides, I will wipe out all of this humankind and I will choose one family and restart so that once again godliness will be re-established and so God arranges for the flood and all the people perish and one single family from that single family again humanity starts multiplying. So we see all that recorded in the first 11 chapters. The second main section of our book of Genesis that would be chapters 12 to 36. In these chapters 12 to 36 is basically where you have this detailed discussion of the stories of Abraham and then you have Isaac. So all of their stories are recorded in chapters 12 up to chapter 36 and then the last portion would be chapters 37 to 50 because over here you see the stories of how God saves his people under the during the time of Joseph how they are able to go to Egypt and God provides for food and provision during the time of famine. All those things are there in your last section. So one to 11 can be the first main section then you have chapters 12 to 36 and finally you have chapters 37 to 50 which is the last portion. Just to touch up on very briefly upon this middle section chapters 12 to 36 with chapter 12 talks about how God chooses Abraham, Abraham obeys to go and settle in a new place because God promises him that land. So it explains in Genesis chapter 18 why God chooses Abraham to be that leader why God could have chosen any family and started his Israelite nation from that person. Why did God specifically choose Abraham as the person through whom his chosen people will be formed. If you turn to Genesis chapter 18 verses 18 to 19 this is something nice that God says about Abraham over here. Genesis 18 to 19 Since Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him for I have known him in order that he may command his children and his household after him that they keep the way of the Lord to do righteousness and justice that the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has spoken to him. God says over here in verse 19 for I have chosen him so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord. God believed that this is one man who will be sincere enough to train his family members and also the descendants who are going to come after them in such a way that a special nation starts getting formed one special group of people who are willing to follow the ways of God and keep the instructions of God. If God had chosen some other person maybe that man would not have the discipline level, the integrity level to actually mold and shape his family members. This is probably not a very nice thing to say over here to the physical class sitting over here because we seem to have except for two women we have all men over here but generally if you have noticed right from the time of Genesis men seem to have the impression that when it comes to training up the children in spiritual matters the wife will take care of it. She is the one who will tell them bedtime stories from the Bible and then as they start growing up she will start teaching them a little more of the Bible, she will pray with them. So somehow from ancient times the wrong impression was that spiritual nurture of the children is mummy's department. Daddy has got important things to do, he has to go and make money, he has to make developed contacts with people so that the family can prosper. So it was assumed that the man has better things to do important things to do. The wife can take care of the spiritual nurture of the children is the wrong impression that was there and here God says I mean this is the value that God places on spiritual instruction. Here God says I am choosing this man Abraham because I know that he is one person who will direct his children and also the household after him because these children will grow up and they should be able to pass on what they have learned to the next generation. So Abraham took care to be a good spiritual leader. It is good that he was able to start off the nation of Israel that he was the patriarch through whom the entire nation came because of his faithfulness. So yes we admire him for his faith but he was also the man who considered spiritual matters important enough that he took the time to teach his family and to teach the people who came after that about the value of following God and keeping his ways. If he had not done that Israel would not never have formed they also would be just like all the other nations and a special people would not have been created out of which the Messiah can come. So Abraham actually played a very important role by being a spiritual leader in his home in his family. We see that about him. So we just talked very briefly about the three sections which are there in Genesis Maybe just to address some particular things which are mentioned in your textbook in your pdf there is usually at the end of each book it will mention unique features of this particular book. For instance you have a subheading which says unique features of Genesis over there it talks about three unconditional covenants that God made under your subheading of unique features and so the first unconditional covenant which God made was the Abrahamic covenant. When God made a covenant through Moses you know the covenant of Moses at that time God put conditions he said if you do this then I will be faithful to you I will cause you to prosper I will bless you so God attached some conditions when he gave the covenant through Moses but the Abrahamic covenant there are no conditions attached God just says to him because you have trusted me it's enough I will now you know make you into a nation. So there are no conditions attached for the Abrahamic covenant there is only one single requirement that the person should place their faith in this living God that's the only condition which is you know laid down so the Abrahamic covenant was the first unconditional covenant that was established and the next two are actually the Davidic covenant and the New Testament covenant which we have now these are the three unconditional covenants that are given where it's mainly just faith is the only thing that is required if you believe in me I will do this for you that's the basis in your textbook it also there's a comparison given where you know they would compare that particular book which we are studying with the other books of the Bible so there's a comparison given between the book of Genesis and the other Bible books there are many many things mentioned over there but just to touch upon one particular detail where it compares Genesis with John and 1st John the statement that is given in your PDF it says over there Genesis began with creation but John and 1st John they began before creation itself and it's interesting because if you look at the very first verse of Genesis what does it say over the Genesis chapter 1 verse 1 it says in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth so the book of Genesis starts off with creation but when you go to John what does it say in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God at that time creation had not happened so we are talking about a time which was before creation the same thing even in 1st John 1 1 if you look at 1st John 1 1 it says that which was from the beginning it's talking again about Jesus Christ and how he was there even before the creation so that's one interesting comparison which they bring out in the same way they try to compare Genesis with many of the other books of the Bible another thing which I which is nice in your PDF is this last portion at the end of each book you know you will have something called the shadow of Christ in that particular book so the shadow of Christ in the book of Genesis what does this term mean they are basically saying in the book of Genesis these are the people these are the objects these are the events which point towards Christ they are like shadows and the shadows are pointing towards the person so that's basically how the term shadow is used for instance you know if I see a shadow of a person then I know that next the actual person will come so if I am just looking maybe if I am standing near a door and I see one shadow near the door I know that there is a person who is coming next with that shadow so I first see the shadow the actual person to whom the shadow belongs so using that kind of an imagery in the book of Genesis are there any people which are pointing towards Christ are there any events which are pointing towards Christ are there even any objects or things which are pointing towards Christ so you would find that in each of the you know in each chapter in your PDF where at the end of the book it will talk about the shadow of Christ in that particular book so there are three main shadows mentioned over here in your notes the first of course is Adam it says Adam is a type of Christ so Adam how did Adam point towards Jesus Christ in what way is Adam pointing towards Jesus maybe we can just you know you can take down one single verse for that 1st Corinthians 15 verse 45 1st Corinthians 15 verse 45 yeah someone can read out 15 45 45 yeah and so it is written the first man Adam become a living being the last Adam become a life giving spirit yeah so here it's making a comparison between Adam and Christ so in what way is Adam pointing towards Jesus Christ Adam was the one through whom the human mankind started he was the first created being and from him all other humans followed but what did this first Adam do instead of being a blessing and a help to the his descendants he rather brought the curse of sin upon them so the first Adam he actually he failed us he did what he did was not good for us but then it talks about another kind of Adam who came and it says he is the last Adam the final Adam he undid all the damage which the first Adam had done the first Adam messed up everything made life impossible for humans you know cut off their relationship with God because of the first Adam so much destruction came into the world but the final Adam he came and once for all finalized and destroyed all the wrong things which had come into the world and he started a new process the kingdom establishment as a result of which slowly little by little all that has been destroyed will start being restored so the final Adam undid the damage which the first Adam had done so we can say that Adam is pointing towards Christ is pointing towards a better Adam someone who will be better than him in representing the people you know in a manner that will be a blessing to them the second shadow that we can see is the skin of the animals that have been sacrificed so it says that the skin of the animals that have been sacrificed it points towards the atonement which Jesus Christ will bring so maybe you can just take down two verses which explain this idea you have Genesis chapter 3 verse 21 and if we can have someone read out that Genesis 3 21 also for Adam and his wife the Lord God made tunics of skin and clothes them it says here in this verse that God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them why did God not make eco friendly clothes he could have used plant fibers he could have used very he could have used jute or cotton and things like that to make clothes for them but instead God chooses to kill an animal and use the skin of that animal to make covering for them so in that sense it clearly points towards what Jesus Christ will do first Corinthians chapter 5 verse 7 where it talks about Christ as the Passover lamp so now we are clothed in the garments which have been made from the skin of the Passover lamp and what kind of garments are these they are white clothes of righteousness which only Jesus Christ can give because he is the one who shed his blood for us and we have been cleansed through his blood so now we are covered in you know in symbolically we are covered by his sacrifice so the the skin garments which God gave to Adam and Eve they are actually pointing towards what Jesus Christ will do one day so in that sense that also is a shadow third shadow here it talks about here in your notes it talks about Melchizedek as a shadow now Melchizedek was a priest who followed the true living God they had all kinds of priests in those days and they had all kinds of gods which they had created for themselves but this man was different Melchizedek worshipped the true living God and so God tells Abraham to give him a tithe because this particular priest was serving the living God he was serving Yahweh and so in the New Testament Jesus becomes a high priest like Melchizedek Paul okay not Paul the writer of Hebrews tries to draw a comparison between this high priest who lived in Abraham's time and he tries to draw a comparison with Jesus so he makes a comparison between Melchizedek the ancient priest and Jesus Christ the high priest how does he bring about the comparison because one is just a human being Melchizedek is just a human king on the other hand Jesus Christ is divine he is God and he is the final high priest for us all so he tries to bring a comparison between these two he talks about it in Hebrews chapter 6 verses 19 and 20 so in Hebrews 6 19 and 20 it talks about how Jesus Christ will become a high priest in the order of Melchizedek in the sense he will also become a high priest like Melchizedek you know serving the true and living God and in Hebrews 7 1 3 the writer tries to bring a comparison between these two Hebrews 7 1 to 3 in verse 3 he says we don't know anything about Melchizedek now because we don't have any historical records about him you know it's what you know the writer of Hebrews says he says we don't know who his father was we don't know who his mother was we do not know what his genealogy was because I think maybe they had lost the historical records about you know those particular events so by the time this writer has written this book of Hebrews they don't know anything about the background of this Melchizedek they only know that he's somebody who was the priest of the living God and Abraham actually goes and gives him a type so he says in verse 3 Hebrews chapter 7 verse 3 without father or mother without genealogy without beginning of days or end of life resembling the son of God so he says this Melchizedek priest he resembles Jesus Christ in the sense the same way this Melchizedek we don't know anything about his parents Jesus Christ also did not have a beginning he did not have parents who gave birth to him he always existed he was always eternal so he tries to draw a comparison between the human priest and Jesus Christ the high priest so this also Melchizedek is also like a shadow who is pointing towards Jesus Christ okay so these are some of the things which we see in the book of Genesis some of the main things that we see so we are kind of out of time so we'll just close with we'll just close with a word of prayer so online students if you have any questions at all from the session which we did today please post them in the Google classroom stream page okay so and I'll try to see that I know that I'll try to answer all of those questions those of us who are here in the campus you know you can come to me and ask your questions anytime but preferably during the class itself if you can raise your hand and ask the questions that would make it easier alright so we'll just close with a word of prayer okay so please if you can all just just bow down our heads for a minute let's do that Lord we could very briefly touch upon the things which are there in your word of Lord in the book of Genesis whatever little bit we have been able to cover today I pray oh Lord that you would just impress that upon our hearts and whatever few learnings that we could learn from this particular book of Genesis I pray that you will remind us to practice those things in our everyday life Lord we commit the rest of our classes into your hands I pray oh Lord that you will make these classes meaningful where we can actually learn something about you and learn to draw closer to you and grow in our faith as a result of it so we pray oh Lord that you would help us in such a way that we are able to learn something that we are able to actually feel your presence and communicate with you through these classes so we pray that you would anoint us help us to have hearts which will be willing to hear from you and help us also oh Lord to practice the things that you teach us thank you Lord in Jesus name Amen