Joseph and the game of many colors-How to Read the Story

Well, it's the privilege to be with you. I have looked forward to this for quite some time. I'm excited to be here. I'm excited to be in this part of the country again. I was just in Boston just a few weeks ago, so it's good to be back here, and it's good to be here when it's not cold. And I'm grateful to the Lord for that. I'm grateful to the Lord for the friendship that he has given me with Pastor Ventura. It's been a blessing, it really has. And sometimes when you run in reform Baptist circles, you're run into more people who are repelled from you than you do people who run toward you. And so it's good to find brothers who are like minded, and brothers who hold deer the same things that we hold dear. And so when this opportunity came, I was excited to be able to take it. I'm excited to be able to come and preach here, excited to come and preach and have sort of a reunion with a friend, and excited to meet new friends, brothers and sisters. And I consider you all precisely that. I'm also excited to be able to share with you some material that I haven't shared in conference form before. God put it on my heart several years ago to do a series of books and my passion. There are two things that I'm passionate about. One is exposition, and the expositional preaching of God's Word is just a passion of mine. And another is cultural apologetics and bringing those two things together and applying God's Word to pressing issues in our day. And so the last several years, over the last seven years, I guess I've had the privilege of writing three books dealing with the area of biblical manhood, womanhood, family, and family discipleship. And it has been a tremendous blessing to be able to do that and to see the fruit that those things have borne, and coming out of that trilogy, God just ignited my heart to write this book on Joseph. We preached through Genesis at GFBC, and when we got to the last section, what we do with a large book like that is we'll break it up into sections, and so we preached, you know, through Genesis for a while, and then we went to a New Testament book, and then we came back to Genesis and then we went to a New Testament book, and the last time we came back to Genesis, it was in this last section, chapters thirty seven to fifty, which really highlights the life of Joseph. And by that time we had a real grasp of the book all our whole teaching team did. By that time, we really understood the ground on which we trod. And so to walk through this last section, this very familiar section of Genesis, with that kind of understanding and with a commitment to Christ centered, redemptive historic preaching, and that is preaching that comes to all texts and tries to preach it as Christian scripture, that the whole Bible we preach as Christian scripture. And so coming to this text that was so familiar that we knew so well and preaching it from that perspective with a greater understanding of the Book of Genesis was it was amazing. I just I was incredibly excited about it and couldn't wait to share the things that I was learning and to write those things. And so what I want to do tonight is really I want to kind of give you an overview. There are several things that will learn over the course of our time together. But tonight, what I want us to get is kind of an overview of the structure of the Book of Genesis. So if you have your Bibles with you, we'll be walking through a lot of the Book of Genesis today in order to get to get a grasp and to get an understanding of the structure of the book, because you won't understand it until you get Until you get the structure, what we'll do on tomorrow is there's kind of a point in the Joseph narrative where you realize that things are not the way we've always assumed they were, and that is in chapter forty one. Because we've always looked at chapter forty one as Joseph's big payoff. And when you hear Joseph, it's either thirty seven you know, where he's sold, you know, or we get thirty nine where he's in Potiphar's house and so on and so forth, or it's forty one right there in forty one, where he, you know, comes to prominence in Egypt, And oftentimes we view that as kind of the payoff point. When we came back to this book, there was no way to look at it that way. Anymore, mainly because of our understanding of the text as a whole. So you'll see that on tomorrow. But in order for you to understand it, you'll need the groundwork that we do today. Okay, so there's juicy stuff. It's coming for you, all right, But we're going to do some stuff that you may not. You may not consider all that juicy right now, but I'm telling you it's juicy stuff. It's important stuff. Okay, It's very important. If we're going to understand this book. There are two ways to look at it. Two ways to look at the structure of this book. One is through the series of tolados that's a Hebrew word for generations of. These are the generations of. And another one is through three particular themes. And I want us to look at those two things because both of these are important and they really help us to interpret everything in the Book of Genesis. The first is the totodotes, or the generations of. These are the most obvious divisions in the Book of Genesis. There are eleven of them, eleven times eleven times. Moses says, these are the generations of and every time we're moving to a different phase and we're turning another corner, and it's very important for us to understand this. First, in chapter two and verse four, we have the generations of the heavens and the earth. Now, this is very important, you know, when we see when we see God's decreeds, you know, we see them in his works of creation, you know, and his providence. Here we see this work of creation, and the first these are the generations of is in this work of creation. After that we see his works of providence, and particularly his works of redemption, because between the first plodote and the second we have fall. The fall occurs in chapter three, so we're running along. These are the generations of the heavens in the earth. Chapter one, the world is created, everything is created. Chapter two we kind of get, you know, a micro picture of creation and of the creation of man, and it's beautiful and it's wonderful. And in chapter three the wheels fall off. It doesn't take long at all. Chapter three and verse fifteen, though, we have the first proclamation of the Gospel, when God says to the serpent, I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed. This is incredibly important. And from then on, we're looking at this picture of redemption. I'll say more about that momentarily, But first, the first is the generations of the heavens of the Earth. Then chapter five, verse one, we have the generations of Adam. This is significant. Why is it so significant? Well, after the fall and then the curse says, I'll put imagy between you and the woman, between your offspring and her offspring. You're gonna bruises hell. He's gonna cross your head. And in the next chapter, in chapter four, we have the first murder, seed of the serpent King kills seed of the woman able. Interestingly, they both come from the woman. Why do I say that came the seed of the serpent because John does in one John three. Okay, he was of the evil one and his actions demonstrate that he was of the evil one. Well, now we have a problem. We have a problem because you know now this, what are we gonna do? Chapter five, verse one, these are the generations of Adam. This is the generations of Adam. And then in chapter five we have the first genealogy, ten generations from Adam to Noah through the godly line of Seth. This is incredibly important if you're going to understand the narrative. It's also important if you're going to understand the flood, but I'll talk about that more in a moment as well. Then in chapter six, verse nine, we have these generations of Noah. This is important because this is a transition. Adam is gone, he's off the scene, and now we have the next generation. We have Noah after this. In chapter ten, verse one, we have the generations of the Suns of Noah. That total dote is very important. We've come out of the flood now and we have the generations after the flood. God has made a promise, He's renewed as covenant, and we're continuing on. It's important that we have this total dot. Then they are the generations of Shim, the generations of Shim. Now we're gonna look, we're looking ahead. I'm gonna peel back just a little bit of what we're gonna do next. But I want you to be able to see this. There's a promise in three fifteen. The promise is this promised seed. So there's one who's going to come. There's a deliverer who's going to come. We know him as the last Atom, of course, but he's going to come through a particular line. I want you to notice that we have Adam and then we have Noah. They're both in that line, they're connecting that line. Next we have the sons of Noah, so that's sort of general. And then we have Shim in eleven ten. These are the generations of Shim. Why is that important Because he's the one through whom the scene continues. That's a pattern, it's a very important pattern. Next we have Tera eleven twenty seven Tarah. That's a totade of transition. We come to Terra. Notice that there's no generations of Abraham. Abraham doesn't get a totadough. Tara gets a totaldough, but not Abraham. And so we've had the flood. After the flood, God lets us know the Promised line is continuing. We've had the Tower of Battle. Now we know the Promised line is continuing. Then we have the generations of Ishmael twenty five twelve. That's the next totadobe. These are the generations of Ishmael. Only after that, in twenty five nineteen do we have the generations of Isaac. So it's Ishmael, not the promise see. And then Isaac, who is the promise See what happened in chapter ten and eleven. We have Noah's sons, all of them not the promise seed. And then we have Shim, who is the promise See next we have these are the generations of Esau. That happens twice in chapter thirty six, verse one, and in chapter thirty six, verse nine, Esau not the promised seed. Who is the promise see Jacob. So if this pattern continues, then the next totaldode ought to be the total dode of Jacob. Chapter thirty seven, verse two. These are the generations of Jacob. Now here's what's interesting. That's the last tolodobe, which means the story of Joseph occurs within the totodote of Jacob. So the story of Joseph ultimately is not about Joseph. If we're going to understand the Joseph narrative, we have to understand it in the context of the generations of Jacob and God's faithfulness and the generations of Jacob. This is very important so that when we get to the Joseph narrative and reading the various, you know, stories in Joseph's life, we have to put them into this context. We have to say, what is this saying about God's faithfulness to Jacob? How is this filling out God's faithfulness to Jacob? Otherwise, what we end up doing is just sort of, you know, kind of we read the Bible of kind of like you read a yearbook. Right when you get your yearbook. What do you do? You get your yearbook and you go to the back of your book and you look at the index and you find your name so that you can see all the pages where you appear, and then you go find yourself. Don't act like that's not what you did when you got your yearbook. That's what you do when you get your yearbook. You go looking for you. We read the Bible like that. When we read the Bible, we want to find ourselves. What is in this for me? What is God saying to me? What has God given to me? See, there's a story of redemption that's bigger than you. And if all you're looking for is you know, what does it say to me? You kind of get this this sort of Esop's fable approach to the Bible. Here's the story, what's the moral of the story. There's good guys, and there's bad guys work hard to be like the good guys and not like the bad guys, but I'm fun. That's how we read the Bible, and you end up with just pure moralism. Pure moralism, okay. And we get to Genesis forty one and it's, you know, five ways to be a great leader. That's not repeat, that's not what that story is all about. We get to Genesis thirty nine and we look at Genesis thirty nine and we think the Genesis thirty nine is there so that we can learn how to overcome sexual temptation. That's not why Genesis thirty nine is there. It's not. It's not for one reason. Men generally don't need to learn how to escape from women who are chasing them and pulling their clothes off. Just generally speaking, that's not how men get into that kind of trouble. Just kind of as a rule, okay, that is not how men fall into that kind of trouble. That's not the point. What's the point? Four times in Genesis thirty nine, four times God was with Joseph. So if I'm going to figure out the main point in Genesis thirty nine, and I'm looking at a temptation that almost no man ever has to deal with. And then God's going to stream at me the same thing four times over. I'm probably going to go with what God screams at me four times as the main point of the chapter. Amen. But we're always looking for moralism, and we're always looking for heroes, and we miss important things. That way, you look at these totadeltes and realize that this story of Joseph falls within the totaldelse of Jacob that forces you to read everything that you read in Joseph's life through that context. That's the one division. But there's another one, and this is the one that really made the book come alive to me. Three ideas, land seed and Covenant. Those are the three ideas land seed and covenant. Throughout the Book of Genesis. There are these three ideas that occur again and again and again, land seed and covenant, and you trace them all the way through the book. And I want you to see that. First of all, let's look at this theme of the land, and in each of these things, I want you to see them in a number of context. First in the context of creation, creation in the land Genesis one, one in the beginning. God created the heavens and the Earth Genesis two four. These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. So now the land is the stage where the story of redemptive history literally comes to life. It is in the earth that God created. In the earth God created, he creates man. Where in the context of the earth, that's where man is created the steam of the land in creation, and he puts him in a particular land in creation. This garden is where he puts him. This is very important. Then there is the fall in the land. So first theme is the theme of land. We see it in creation, and then we see it in fall. How do we see it in the fall in a number of places Genesis three, beginning of verse twenty two. Then the Lord God said, behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live forever. Therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man at the east of the garden of Eden. He placed the chair of him at a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. So now man is get out of the garden. Not only that, but the land itself is affected by the man, and we see that in the curse. We also see in Genesis six, beginning of verse one. Look at verses one through three, when man began to multiply on the face of the land and daughters were born to them. The sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. Now let me just put a footnote here. Remember I said that when you understand those tolodotes, it becomes easier for you to interpret the Book of Genesis. There are a lot of interpretations of this right here. You've got angelic beings or you know, you know, with women, or you've got this race of you know, prehistoric men, or you got this whatever. No, no, if you understand the tola dotes right first, there's the generation of Adam right there in chapter five. After that we have this, you know, ten generations from Adam to Noah through the godly line of Seth. Right the godly line of Seth that gets us to Noah. Noah's the one who's going to survive the flood. What problem does God have? The problem that he has is the sons of God, the godly line of Seth saw the daughters of Man, the ungodly line of Cain were attractive. The tool a dotes up. You see that. And you don't have to have science fiction in into genesis here, okay? Why because it's all about protecting the godly seed, right, That's why this was problematic. Okay. And they took as their wives any they chose. That's important. They took as their wives any they chose. Hold on to that thought. It's going to be important later on. Then the Lord said, my spirits shall not abide with men forever, for he is flesh. His day shall be one hundred and twenty years. Go on. Look at verses five through eight. The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth and grieved him, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, I will blot out man whom I've created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens. For I am sorry that I have made them. But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord. Isn't it interesting? Jodn't just say he's gonna blot him out, Say it's gonna blot him out from the land Versus eleven through thirteen. Now the earth, can you count them with me? There's one was corrupting God's sight, and the earth there's two, was filled with violence. And God saw the earth. There's three, and behold it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted their way on the earth. There's four. And God said to Noah, I have determined to make an end of all flesh. For the earth there's five is filled with violence through them. Behold, I will destroy them with the earth sixth time. Do you think there's a point? Chapter seven, beginning of verse twenty, the waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep, and all flesh dyed that moved on the earth, birds, livestock, beasts, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and all mankind everything on the dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died. He blotted out every living thing that was on the face of the ground, manned animals, creeping things, birds of the heavens. They were blotted out from the earth, earth, earth, land, ground, earth. You can't talk about cree without talking about the land. You can't talk about the fall without talking about the land. Then the Patriarchs. The theme of the land continues with the Patriarchs Chapter twenty three, beginning of verse seventeen, with Adam expelled from the garden, mankind destroyed and purge from the land. The narrative moves forward as God creates a people, reiterates the mandate to be fruit from the multiply in Genesis eight, Genesis nine, and ultimately calls a specific people to a specific land for a specific purpose. To see that in twelve one through three. But here in chapter twenty three, verses seventeen to twenty. So the field of Ephron and Macpela, which was to the east of Memory, the field with the cave that was in it, and all the trees that were in the field throughout its whole area, was made over to Abraham as a possession in the presence of the Hittites before all who went in at the gates of the city. After this, Abraham buried Sarah, his wife in the cave of the field of Macpela, east of Memory, that is Hebron in the land of Canaan. The field and the cave that is in it were made over to Abraham as property for a burying place by the Hittites. Why is that significant? God promised Abraham the land. This is the first piece of it he gets. But it's just a burial place, it's toehold. It's part of the fulfillment of a promise. Not only that, but we see that Isaac same thing, Jacob, same thing, and they begin to increase in the land with each of the patriarchs. So we see in Creation, we see in the Fall, and we see in the Patriarchs this theme of the land that is carried throughout the book of Genesis. Okay, So now when we get to Genesis chapter forty one tomorrow, Okay, we give you a little preview. When we get to Genesis chapter forty one tomorrow, when we understand the importance of the of the of the land. Right, when we get that in Creation, in Fall, in the patriarchs by the way, I would say, you know, creation, fall, redemption, and then to consummation. Right. So in all of that we see the importance of the land. Okay, So in chapter forty one, where's Joseph outside of the land, which means it can't be a good thing. Just a huge interpretive key right there, when you understand the significance of the land, because now there's this land that's promised. Okay, So first there's a land that's created, and then there's the land from which Adam is expelled. Then there's the land as a whole that's purged. Then there's a land that's promised to a particular people. Then there's a piece of it that's gained by Abraham, a bigger piece by Isaac, a bigger piece by Jacob. All of it is promised to them, and they're looking forward to owning all of it. And now in chapter forty one here's Joseph. Not only is he not in the Land of Promise, but he's in Egypt, which is symbolic of the opposite of the Land of Promise. That can't be intended to be a good thing. Once you understand the concept of the land and its importance in genesis. Second concept is the concept of the seed. First creation and the seed. Chapter one, beginning of verse eleven, and God said, let the earth spout sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed and fruit, trees bearing fruit, and which is their seed, each according to its kind on the earth. And it was so the earth brought forth vegetation plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit, and which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good, and there was evening, and there was morning the third day. Seed seed, seed, seed reproducing according to its own kind. One verse twenty nine. God said, behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. So creation and seed. Okay, creation and seed. There's a number of things here, for example, the idea that everything is going to produce according to its own kind, which obliterates any sort of macro evolution. Okay, that we have things changing from one kind to another. Why because they've changed, they reproduced by the seed. And the seed only reproduces its own kind. Okay. The man and the woman is implied here. It's more specific in chapter three, but it's implied here that even the man and the woman when they are created, they produce and reproduced through what the seed. Same thing. Okay, So there's this idea of reproducing through seed, but there's also the idea of God providing through seed. Okay, both of them here in Genesis chapter one. This is incredibly important. Again, not to give him away too much, but when you start asking yourself, why why from Joseph's good kid, why is this stuff happening to Joseph? You know, just through Joseph, he's Joseph. He's a good deal. Other look at these other guys and look at him, and then he's the one who goes here and there's all this bad stuff. You know, he's in part of Resus. He's a slave, but he's being good. And this woman goes after him. Bam. Now he's in prison. He did the right thing. Governor rewards him with jail. Now he's in jail. He interprets the dreams. The guys go back and they forget him for two more years. That's awful. Now, all of a sudden, he comes to power in Egypt. He's outside of the promised land. But what's he doing storing up seed? Why? Two reasons? Remember the two reasons. Remember the two importances of seed here in Genesis one No. Number one. God gives you the seed so that you can eat. But the seed is also how you reproduce. So now we have Joseph who is in Egypt and there is seed grain why so that when the famine comes, not only can he survive, but Joseph is not the promised seed Judah is. How's Judah going to reproduce? How is he ultimately going to have a descendant named David and a descendant named Jesus. I'll tell you how his physical seed is going to reproduce, Because Joseph went to Potiphar's house and into prison and into the palace so that he could preserve seed so that Judah didn't starve to death. You see that when you understand the importance of seed here in Genesis, creation and the seed. Secondly, the fall and the seed. We already talked about Genesis three fifteen. I will put enmity between you and the woman, in between your offspring or seed and her offspring or seed. He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel again. Some translations use offspring, some translations use seed, but the same idea, because how do we reproduce. We reproduce through the seed. So in the fall there is the same idea. There is the idea of the promised seed. This is why the total dotes are important, because we're tracing the promised seed. When you understand this, it helps you interpret everything in Genesis. How about the patriarchs and the seed. The patriarch's are more than mere examples. In fact, they are buying large, pretty poor examples. I mean, think about it. There's a lot of places where you don't want to be like Abraham, Isaac or Jacob Amen. I mean, Abraham gives his wife away twice. Isaac's a liar and deceiver, right. Jacob's a terrible father, maybe the worst in the Bible. I mean, there's others who give him a run for his money, but he's a really bad father. He really is. Trust me, God did not give us Abraham, Isaac and Jacob so that we could read Genesis and say be like those guys. Their significance lay in the fact that they are tangible evidence of God's faithfulness to his promise. Neither infertility in the case of Abraham and Sarah, nor deception in the case of Jacob and Leah, nor famine in the case of the flight to Egypt, can thwart God's plan to bring about the redemption of his people through the promised seed. Third theme is the theme of covenant, land seed Covenant. First of all, Creation and the Covenant Chapter two, verse fifteen. Go back to chapter two. The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, you may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it dying, you shall die. And so even in Creation we see covenant. Before the Fall, we see this idea. That's the only way that we can have communion with God. That's the only way that we can understand who God is. That's the only way that God can reveal himself to us. The Fall and Covenant Genesis chapter nine, beginning of verse eight, she could call that first one inn ademic covenant, and this one knoweth. Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him. Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the livestock, and every beast of the earth with you, as many as came out of the art. It is for every beast of the earth. I establish my covenant with you, that never again shall all flesh be cut off by the waters of the flood, and never again shall there be a flood to destroy the earth. And God said, this is a sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all generations. I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh, and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of flesh that is on the earth. God said to Noah, this is the sign of the covenant that I have established between me and all flesh that is on the earth. So even in the fall, there is covenant. It's God's covenant. Not gonna do this one again. The only time a warrior hangs up his bow is when his fighting is done. God hangs up his bow in the sky, and it's a sign of his covenant. Rain is gonna come again, and rain may even come, and there may even be floods in certain places. By the way, here we going. You know, you cut me and I bleed apologetics. Okay, sorry, but the whole macroevolution thing, the seedsh forget that, the whole idea that the flood was just localized. Right, People who do not believe in a universal flood believe God's a liar because he said he was never going to do it again. If the flood was not universal, then every time there's a flood locally, God's a liar because he said he wasn't gonna do it again. And if the flood in Genesis wasn't a universal flood but just a local one, he does that all the time, amen, somebody, Okay, he does that all the time. This was different. This was different. So rain still falls, and sometimes rain falls, and there's floods in certain places. But the rainbow says, listen, this is happening, but this is not bad. Not doing that again. How about the patriarchs and the idea of covenant reference Genesis twelve. Let's look at it. Genesis twelve one to three. Now the Lord said to Abram, go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you, and I will make of you a great nation. And I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you, I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Amen, Holleljah. Praise the Lord, especially for that last line that got me in. Amen, Praise the Lord for that last line that got me in. This is the covenant that God makes. And reiterate rates again and again with Isaac Chapter twenty six, verses one through five. And Isaac went to Gerar to Abimele, king of the Philistines, and the Lord appeared to him and said, do not go down to Egypt. Dwell in the land of which I shall tell you. Sojourn in this land, and I will be with you and will bless you. For to you and to your offspring, I will give all these lands, and I will establish the oath that I swore to Abraham, your father. I will multiply your offspring as the scars of heaven, and will give to your offspring all these lands. And in your offspring all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. There it is again, because Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes, and my laws. There it is again. By the way, notice the connection between the Covenant, the sea in the land right here, all of them, right there, the Covenant, the seed in the land. This is the message of Genesis with Jacob, Chapter twenty eight, beginning of verse twelve. And Jacob dreamed, and behold there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. And behold the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. And behold the Lord stood above it and said, I am the Lord, the God of Abraham, your father, and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie, I will give to you and to your offspring. Your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth. And you shall spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north and to the south. And you and your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, And I will bring you back to this land. For I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you. I will bring you back to this land. I will bring you back to this land. That's a foreshadowing. I would argue of the exodus. Why does there need to be an exodus because of Joseph going to Egypt, Which means that Joseph Goringney Egypt can't just be about him getting a good job with Pharaoh. You see this land seed covenant everywhere you look. In Genesis, remember these two things. Remember the toldose Remember the generations of why, because that gets you a picture of redemptive history. This is what God is working out. God is working out redemptive history even I mean from Genesis on. In fact, I would argue that Genesis three fifteen is the thesis statement of the whole Bible. He lays it out right there, and everything from then on we're looking forward to redemption. We're looking forward to the promised seed. Everything from then on, everything that he's doing from then on is bringing us back to that place of redemption and back to that place of the promised scene. And so when we continue on with the total doose we look and what does God say? God says, you know, Okay, here's here's Adam. But Adam's not the final God because we got to get to Noah. Noah's not the ultimate answer. He's gonna see you through the flood. And then here's noah sons, not his sons, but this particular son, it's the promised Seed. And then we get to terror. Terror is a transition, and he gets us to this guy named Abraham. Abraham has a couple of sons. First one is Ishmael. No, not Ishmael. I didn't say a seed, I said BLUs seed. It's Isaac. And then Isaac has twins because maybe the problem the first time was this Egyptian woman. No, these guys both had the same mother, one of them born first. I'm taking the second one. Why so that you'll know that this is about election Eventually God takes them into Egypt and he turns them into a nation. Now we have a nation. He brings them out of Egypt as a nation, and he puts them into the land. But the land's not the answer. It's not enough. Now we have a nation in a land, and the nation in the land wants a king. Maybe that's the answer. And so eventually they get kings, most of them horrible, some of them good. They even get a great king by the name of David. But his David the answer. No, David's not the answer. He's a king and he's a great king, but he's a man and he's a sinner. He's not the answer. But we see a foreshadowing I believe in David, just like we see a foreshadowing in David's forefather, Judah. We'll talk about that later on. We have a people, they get a land, they get a law, they get a king, they get a temple, and it's still not enough. Then he sends him prophets, his covenant lawyers, and his prophets say, you're a nation, you got a land, you've got a law, you got kings, and you still messing up. Now they go into exile and God purges his people and then he brings him back to the land. Still not enough, but eventually he gets to the New Testament, and the New Testament oddly begins with a genealogy. Why so that you know that Jesus is the promised Seed. That's why God fulfills his promise in the person of Christ. He's the promise seed, by the way. Then he takes the promise Seed into Egypt, so that out of Egypt he can call his son, just like Israel came out of Egypt. Christ, the true Israel comes out of Egypt. And when Israel came out of Egypt, they went where through the waters of the Jordan. After Jesus comes out of Egypt, where do you see him in Matthew and the Jordan being baptized? Then he goes to the wilderness. What's happening with him in the wilderness forty days? Like Israel was in there for forty years, and he's tempted lust of the eyes, lust of the flesh. Both were pride of life the same way. The first atom was tempted, but the last atom is victorious where the first atom failed. After he's tempted, where does he go he goes to the mountain and he starts saying things like you've heard it said, but I say unto you. Now he's the lawgiver, but greater than Moses. Yes. After that, he goes out and starts doing miraculous things and exerting his power, kind of like during the conquest, until eventually he goes to the cross as the suffering servant, and he raises again on the third day, demonstrating what that He's crushed the head of the snake, so that now, just like all of us under Adam, our federal head, we're enemies of God. Those who come to Christ through repentance and faith are under a new federal head, the last Adam. And guess what we look forward to. We have the promised to see, we have the new Covenant. Now we're just waiting for a land. But the land is not like any land that anyone has ever known before. It has foundations whose builder and maker is God. You see, the land that Abraham and Isaac and Jacob pined over was shadow of the land that yet awaits the children of God. See the theme of land, Seed, and Covenant not just the theme the Genesis. It's a theme for all of redemptive history. So how dare we reduce this magnificent picture of God's redemptive work with his covenant people too? Be good and you can get a job with a pagan. Come on, now, we can't do that. We miss something significant when we do that. So from now on, when you open up the Book of Genesis, remember those tolados and ask yourself which generation am I am and what part of that unfolding picture of redemptive history in Genesis am I now looking at? And then secondly, as you look at it, ask yourself, within this tot adulte, what does this particular passage say to me about land and about seed and about covenant and about how God is redeeming his people. Now does that mean that there are no moral issues in the Book of Genesis to which we need to pay attention? Absolutely not. You did not hear me say that. Absolutely not. There are absolutely moral issues in Genesis to which we need to pay attention. Amen. But there's two things that I want you to keep in mind. The problem with this and there's some people who's you know, who haven't who haven't gotten this. I am not saying that morality is unimportant in the Old Testament. I'm not saying that the morals of characters in the Old Testament are unimportant. Here's what I do say. If I want to understand proper biblical morality, I don't stop at a personal example. If I want to understand morality, I have to take two more steps. I look at the personal example, and then step number one, I take it to God's moral law, because there's where I see a picture of righteousness, right. And then step number two, I take it to Christ, who is my true moral example. So if I see somebody in the Old Testament doing something that is praiseworthy, number one, it's only praiseworthy to the degree that it upholds God's moral law. And secondly, it's not nearly as praiseworthy as it is when you see it in its fullness in the person and work of Christ. So I'm not saying that the morality here is unimportant. I'm saying, don't stop short. Don't just look at some character in the Old Testament and say, he did these three things that he was blessed. Therefore you go do those three things and you'll be blessed. Number One, you missed God's moral law and number two, you miss God's moral example in the person of Christ. So don't you dare run out of here saying I'm arguing that morality in the Old Testament is not present and not important. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is present and it is important. But if it was enough, we could have stopped at Genesis. But it's not enough. The morality of these characters in Genesis was not enough. The morality of the judges not enough, the morality of the kings not enough. Moral out of the other prophets not enough. That's why we have a prophet, priest, and king who is unlike any other, and his name is Jesus. And if you stop before you get to him, your morality is incomplete. This is the Word of God. My prayer for you, my prayer for me is that we would mine it for all of its incredible riches and depth. My prayer for you is that you don't leave here saying you know, wow, Genesis is so inaccessible and unapproachable. I was wrong. Da da da da da. My prayer for you is that you say, wait a minute, if you just look at some simple things that are right there for everybody. The tot adotes, these are the generations of man. By the time that's repeated three four, five, six, seven, eight eleven times. If you're just paying attention, you go, that's pretty important. Right, you want to go simiary for that, right, the Land, the Seed, the Covenant. When you see that over and over and over again, he go, yeah, that's pretty important. So we haven't done rocket science here, and yet with these two very simple tools, I believe when you go back and ReGenesis, you will never read it the same way again. And we barely stretched the surface. But in all of it, know this, we serve the God who speaks, and he doesn't hide his speech. He has revealed it, and he's preserved it, and he's protected it in his word so that we might know him. And when we search his word, he is there to be found. Do we have complete knowledge of him through this? Absolutely not. It'll take all eternity and we still won't have complete knowledge of him. Yet all that we need for life and godliness we find in his word. Let's search it, let's dig in it. And let me leave you with this. If you've come to the Bible and the only thing you've seen the Bible for is rules, to live by. Then you've missed something that is incredibly important, because the fact of the matter is you can't live by those rules. But the good news is there is one who has, and in his active obedience he kept the whole law perfectly because he himself was and is perfect. And in his passive obedience he laid down his life on behalf of those who cannot keep that law perfectly as he did. And because of his active and passive obedience, there is a double imputation that those who come to him in repentance and faith have their sin imputed to him and his righteousness imputed to them. So that we stand before God clothed in an alien righteousness that is not our own, but is the actual righteousness of Christ, not of any other character in the Bible, but of Christ himself. Don't dare run to the Bible looking for rules that you cannot keep. Run to the Bible looking for the son who cannot sin, because the God who cannot lie has revealed him there. And when you find him, cling to him with everything you have. Let's pray, Father, thank you, thank you for your kindness and condescending to us, for revealing yourself to us. In your word. Thank you that you have not left us wandering aimlessly in the dark, but it provided a way for us to know what it is that you have said concerning yourself, your Son, and our salvation. Grant by the power of your spirit, that the eyes of our hearts might be opened, that we might hear and heed the truths that we have heard, that we might cling to Christ, not to our own understanding, and not to our own righteousness, but that we might see, celebrate, embrace, and receive His righteousness, and be found therein. Grant by your grace that we would trust in nothing less. Watch over us while we are apart from one another. Grant us a peaceful sleep, And should you terry, grant that we might wake again tomorrow and dig even deeper into your truth, to the end that our lives might be challenged, changed, transformed, it even conformed to the very image of Christ, and whose name we pray and ask all these things. Amen.