Today we begin a new sermon series I have entitled “Route 66” because we are going to take a journey together through all 66 books of the Bible in 66 Sundays. My challenge to you is to read the book of the week and then come to church to hear a message about that book. You can also join us during the week for one of our small groups where I will try to answer questions you may have about your reading.
So, let’s begin at the beginning, with the book of Genesis. Each week my plan is to tell you something about the author of the book we are studying, the date it was probably written, the themes of the book, the structure, and then focus on one key concept from each book. So, here we go…
Author
The traditional view is that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible. However, there is no internal claim to Mosaic authorship in any of these books. The view of modern scholarship, for the past 200 years, is a bit more complicated.
The view of modern scholarship regarding the authorship of Genesis is called the documentary hypothesis. It is an educated guess based upon numerous observations. The hypothesis began with biblical scholars in the eighteenth century examining many doublets in Genesis. For example, there are two creation stories, not one. And there are two stories of Noah and the flood, not just one. Furthermore, one strand within the first five books refers to God as Yahweh, or Jehovah. Another strand refers to God with the term Elohim. Thus, two of the sources for Genesis are denoted by the letters J and E. A third source for the first five books of the Bible is called the Priestly source and is denoted by the letter P.
The documentary hypothesis reminds us of something very important about the Bible from the get-go. The Bible is not simply one book by one author. It is a collection of books, a sacred library if you will, containing many voices of faith writing over many centuries. This makes the foundation of our faith richer rather than poorer.
Date
The traditional dating for the book of Genesis goes along with the idea of Moses as author. Thus, the traditional date puts the writing of Genesis in the 15th century BC. The view of modern scholarship puts the date of writing for Genesis much later, anywhere between the 10th and 5th centuries, so as early as the time of King David or possibly as late as the post-exilic period. In any case, it is the view of most modern scholars that many of the sacred stories of Israel were first passed on orally, then written down by their separate sources, J, E, and P, as well as a fourth source we will talk about in a few weeks. It was only much later that these sources were combined to form the first five books of the Bible as we know them today.
If you want to know more about who wrote the first five books of the Bible and when, I highly recommend reading Who Wrote the Bible by my former professor, Richard Elliott Friedman.
Themes
Genesis is the book of beginnings… of heaven and earth, light and darkness, sea and sky, land and vegetation, sun, moon and stars, sea, air and land animals, human beings, sin and redemption, blessing and curse, society and civilization, marriage and family, art, craft and industry, God’s covenant people—Israel. The list could go on.
Genesis is also a book about relationships… between God and creation, God and humans, human beings with each other.
Genesis is thoroughly monotheistic, opposing the ideas of polytheism (many gods), atheism (no god) and pantheism (everything is god).
Genesis presents God as sovereign over creation. God reserves the right of ultimate freedom, to overturn human customs, traditions, and plans.
Genesis introduces us to the way in which God makes covenant with human beings, pledging his love and faithfulness to them and calling on them to promise to do the same toward him. Many theologians down through history have seen the idea of covenant as summarizing the message of the Bible. According to covenant theology God established a covenant of works with Adam and Even. Adam and Eve failed to keep their covenant obligations. Thereafter, God established a covenant of grace which reached its fulfillment in Jesus Christ. In Genesis we see covenants established with Noah and Abraham.
Sacrifice for sin is established in Genesis as an essential part of God’s gracious covenant relationship with his people. As the writer to the Hebrews puts it in the New Testament, “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.” (Hebrews 9:22)
Genesis gives us the first hint of God’s ultimate provision for human salvation. In Genesis 3:15 we read these words of God cursing the serpent for his role in the Fall…
And I will put enmity
between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and hers;
he will crush your head,
and you will strike his heel.
It has been believed by Christian theologians for centuries that Jesus is the one who has crushed the head of the serpent.
Genesis is also a story of faith. In Genesis 15:6 we read, “Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.” Hundreds of years after Genesis first appeared in the form that we know it in today, this verse became pivotal to Paul and his understanding of justification by faith. Hebrews 11 in the New Testament contains a list we often call the heroes of the faith. More than half of that list refers to characters in the book of Genesis.
Structure
One way to think about the overall structure of the book of Genesis is that it is constructed around major stories. You have the stories of creation from Genesis 1:1-2:3. Then there is the story of Adam and Eve and their descendants beginning in Genesis 2:4 and running through Genesis 5:32. Following this you have the stories of Noah and his family and their survival through the flood in Genesis 6 through 11. Then there are the stories of Abraham and Sarah in 12:1-25:18. Next there are the stories of Isaac and Rebecca in 25:19-28:9. The stories of Jacob and his wives follow in 28:10-36:43. And finally, we have the stories of Joseph in 37:1-50:2.
Key Concept—Walking with God
For the rest of our time together this morning I want to focus on one key concept in the book of Genesis. It is the idea of walking with God. In Genesis 5:21-24 we read…
When Enoch had lived 65 years, he became the father of Methuselah. After he became the father of Methuselah, Enoch walked faithfully with God 300 years and had other sons and daughters. Altogether, Enoch lived a total of 365 years. Enoch walked faithfully with God; then he was no more, because God took him away.
This synopsis of Enoch’s life comes to us in the midst of a genealogy. This genealogy traces the human ancestry of Noah back to Adam through Adam’s godly son Seth. As you may have experienced, if you have tried to read certain parts of the Hebrew Scriptures, genealogies in the Bible can become very repetitious, seemingly tedious. We read of the five men before Enoch… that they were born, they lived a certain length of time, they fathered children, they lived a certain length of years after that, fathered more children, and then they died. But then we come to Enoch and there is suddenly a delightful interruption to this dry and repetitious genealogy. Enoch didn’t just live, father children, and then die. Enoch walked with God.
“And then he (Enoch) was no more, because God took him away.” It is hard to know what this meant in its original context. Christians have interpreted this to mean that Enoch did not die but that God took him straight from this life to heaven. But the ancient Israelites did not have any significant belief in an afterlife. Still, it could be that this little story was inserted by a later editor at a time when the Jewish people were developing an idea of an afterlife and specifically of resurrection.
However you interpret the story, there is the suggestion that there is a difference between walking with God and merely living. Despite the creative vitality and godliness of others mentioned in this genealogy, all their lives ended in death. And perhaps there is the suggestion here that if you walk with God in this life there will be something more than death waiting for you at the end.
Now when we talk about walking with God, we must be clear that we are not talking about merely living a religious life. There is a difference between being religious and walking with God.
For example, some Hindus have a desire to visit the city of Banares at least once in their lifetime. It is a holy city to them, with fifteen hundred temples. The road encircling the city is thirty-six miles long. To walk all the way around the city with devotion is deemed a very holy thing. That, to me, is an example of doing something religious.
As a Christian I believe that who we walk with is more important than where we walk. I believe that we, like Enoch, have the privilege of walking with God. And I believe that happens through a relationship with his Son Jesus Christ. Nothing is more astounding or more important in life than that.
Richard Elliott Friedman says that this expression, walking with God, is used in ancient Near Eastern texts to express continuous fidelity. So here it would mean that Enoch was faithful to God. I imagine that is true. But to my mind, the phrase “walked with God” is so much more expressive. I don’t take it to mean that Enoch literally had God walking beside him in a body like any other human being might do. But the expression, to me, connotes relationship, conversation, intimacy.
It is interesting to me that Enoch walked with God after the birth of his son. There is something about becoming a parent that invites us to recognize our need for God.
I remember when Becky first told me that she was pregnant with our first son. She announced it to me on my 29th birthday by giving me a little box all wrapped up. Inside the box was a Christmas ornament, a little toy hobby horse. And with the ornament was a little note with a little blue heart on it. The note said simply: we did it!
I’ll never forget the feeling I had when Becky gave me that news. I was thrilled that we were going to have a baby. But then my next thought was: “How am I going to support this child? I’ve got to get serious about my life and my work.” There was something about becoming a father that made me more serious about life, and made me realize in a greater way, my dependence upon God.
Perhaps it was the same way for Enoch. There was a time when he didn’t walk with God. Then he had a son, Methuselah, and he began walking with God.
Perhaps you have had a similar experience. Perhaps when you became a parent you started to realize your need for God in a whole new way, and perhaps that is why you are here in church today. I think a lot of people who have drifted away from the church come back once they have their own children.
It is also interesting to me that we are told nothing about Enoch’s work, only about his relationships. As men, some of us tend to think that work is the most important thing in life. But here we have a man’s epitaph, so to speak. He was a man who pleased God, Scripture tells us, and the epitaph says nothing about his work. It only mentions his relationship with God and his relationship with his children.
Robert Morgan has written, “God didn’t call me to find fulfillment in the quantity of my work for him but in the quality of my walk with him.”
There is a joke among graduates from Princeton, that when you die you will have three dates on your tombstone: the date you were born, the date you died, and the date you graduated from Princeton.
In a similar fashion, we are told only a few simple things about Enoch: he was born, he fathered children, he walked with God, and God took him away.
Well, perhaps, we are told a little bit more than that. We are told that Enoch walked with God for a long time, 300 years in fact. The long lives of these early humans is a reminder to me that we are in a part of Genesis, from chapters 1 through 11, that contains a lot of Jewish mythology. So, I don’t take these years as a historical, chronological record. One point that the authors and editors of Genesis seem to be making is that as people get further and further away from the perfection of God’s original creation, their lifespans get shorter. Eventually, we end up with Moses who is said to have lived 120 years, which is a little bit closer to what we would think of as a normal lifespan.
However one interprets these long lifespans, I think the author or editor of these particular verses is making the point that Enoch walked with God for a long time. Enoch’s walk with God was no flash in the pan incident. It was not simply a phase in his life. His walk with God constituted the majority of his life. Enoch pursued a long obedience in the same direction.
Steven J. Cole says that Scripture “often refers to the Christian experience as a walk, seldom as a run, and never as a mad dash.” A relationship with God is something which must be pursued deliberately, over a long period of time.
Now, because this walk with God is meant to be a long walk it means that we will see a lot of different scenery on our walk. Some of the scenery will be enchanting while other parts will be flat and uninteresting. The important thing is to keep walking. And when you fall down, get back up and keep going by God’s strength. The path we walk with God may have a lot of zig zags in it since it is a long path. I have never been on a very long road that was perfectly straight. And sometimes, because the path with God doesn’t go in a straight line, we may feel like something is wrong. Never mind, just stick to the path, and keep walking with God.
The fact that Enoch walked with God for 300 years suggests that over the course of his life, Enoch spent more time with God than with anyone else.
Gordon MacDonald has written, “To follow Christ is to walk with Him first into the presence of His Father. If that is so, we had better know how to act in the divine presence now (in this present life) and then (in the life everlasting). Ultimately, we will be there a long, long time.”
Walking with God suggests a special intimacy with God. In Genesis 3:8 we read of the Lord God walking in the Garden of Eden in the cool of the day. This suggests that Adam and Eve before the Fall had a close, intimate relationship with the Lord.
After the Fall we read of others besides Enoch who had a walk with God. In Genesis 6:9 we read that “Noah was a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked with God.” In Genesis 17:1 the Lord tells Abram to walk before him and be blameless. In Genesis 24:40 Abraham talks about the Lord before whom he has walked. In Genesis 48:15 Joseph calls on the God before whom his fathers, Abraham and Isaac, walked. Micah 6:8 says, “He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” And in Malachi 2:6 the Lord says of Levi, “He walked with me in peace and uprightness, and turned many from sin.”
This all raises the question: how do we walk with God? In Hebrews 11:5-6, the writer to the Hebrews equates pleasing God with walking with God. And he tells us that without faith it is impossible to please God. So, I think we can say that we walk with God by faith, by trusting in him through his Son Jesus Christ.
And as I suggested earlier, a walk with God suggests to me communication with God. How do we communicate with him? I believe God speaks to us through Scripture and we speak to him through prayer.
I also believe that walking with God is not always, or even primarily, a solitary activity. Walking with God is something we do together through corporate worship and fellowship.
Allow me to close with this story from Stuart Briscoe…
Many years ago, when the children were small, we went for a little drive in the lovely English countryside, and there was some fresh snow. I saw a lovely field with not a single blemish on the virgin snow. I stopped the car, and I vaulted over the gate, and I ran around in a great big circle striding as wide as I could. Then I came back to the kids, and I said, “Now, children, I want you to follow in my footsteps. So, I want you to run around that circle in the snow, and I want you to put your feet where your father put his feet.
Well, David tried and couldn’t quite make it. Judy, our overachiever, was certain she would make it; she couldn’t make it. Pete, the little kid, took a great run at it, put his foot in my first footprint and then strode out as far as he could and fell on his face. His mother picked him up as he cried.
She said to me, “What are you trying to do?”
I said, “I’m trying to get a sermon illustration.”
I said, “Pete, come here.” I picked up little Peter and put his left foot on my foot, and I put his right foot on my foot. I said, “Okay, Pete, let’s go.” I began to stride one big stride at a time with my hands under his armpits and his feet lightly on mine.
Well, who was doing it? In a sense, he was doing it because I was doing it. In a sense there was a commitment of the little boy to the big dad, and some of the properties of the big dad were working through the little boy.
In exactly the same way, in our powerlessness we can’t stride as wide as we should. We don’t walk the way we should. We don’t hit the target the way we ought. It isn’t that we are as bad as we could be. It’s just that at no point are we as good as we should be. Something’s got to be done.
I believe Jesus did that something. He lived a perfect life in fulfillment of all that God wanted for human beings. Stride for stride he followed perfectly in his Father’s footsteps. Then he died on a cross in the place of people like us whose lives are full of missteps. And he rose again from the dead. That means he is alive now and can come into our lives by the Holy Spirit and enable us to walk with God in his footsteps…
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