📖 Old Testament Survey — Unit 1: The Beginning of the Story (Genesis)

I. Why We Read the Old Testament First

Imagine handing someone the second half of a great novel and asking them to make sense of it. They might enjoy the prose, follow the dialogue, even guess at the plot — but they would never really know who any of the characters are or why anything matters. That is what it is to read the New Testament without the Old. Three quarters of our Bible is the Old Testament. The world Jesus stepped into was the world of Moses and David and Isaiah, and the first thing He told the disciples on the road to Emmaus, after His resurrection, was that the Scriptures had been about Him all along (Luke 24:27). Those Scriptures were not the Gospels. They were the Old Testament.

Jesus went further than that. He told the religious leaders of His day, "You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me" (John 5:39). The Bible Jesus held in His hands was the Old Testament, and He said it was a book about Him. So when we open Genesis we are not stepping back into ancient history. We are stepping into the same story, only earlier. Every great theme of the New Testament — grace, faith, covenant, sacrifice, redemption, kingdom — appears first in the Old, like a stream that begins as a small spring high in the mountains and grows into a mighty river by the time it reaches the sea.

The Old Testament also gives us the language of worship. The Psalms shape every Christian's prayer life. The Ten Commandments still stand behind our moral conscience. And every drop of blood ever shed on every altar is a shadow that points to one cross outside Jerusalem.

II. The World of the Old Testament: Geography, Language, and Canon

The land of Israel sits at the crossroads of three continents — Africa, Asia, and Europe. Every great empire of the ancient world — Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome — passed through that narrow corridor. That was no accident. God placed His people on the world's busiest highway so that when the message went out, it would travel in every direction. He was thinking of you and me long before we were born.

The Old Testament was written largely in Hebrew, with a few sections in Aramaic. Hebrew is a concrete, picture-rich language. Where Greek excels at abstract ideas, Hebrew paints. The word for "know" — yada — is not a filing-cabinet word. It is a relationship word. When Genesis says Adam knew his wife Eve, the word means more than information; it means intimacy. Knowing God in Scripture is never a matter of passing a quiz. It is friendship.

The Hebrew Bible has three divisions: the Law (Torah), the Prophets (Nevi'im), and the Writings (Ketuvim) — together, the Tanakh. Jesus referred to these three divisions in Luke 24:44 when He said all things written about Him in "the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms" must be fulfilled. Our course will follow a similar order — beginning with the five books of Moses, then moving through the historical books, the wisdom literature, and finally the prophets.

III. The Book of Genesis: The Book of Beginnings

Moses wrote Genesis a thousand years before the Greek historians were born. And yet when you open it, it reads as if it were written this morning, because human nature has not changed since chapter three.

Genesis is the book of beginnings. It opens with the most majestic sentence ever written: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1). That single line answers three questions every soul eventually asks. Who? God. What? The heavens and the earth — everything that is. When? In the beginning, before time as we know it. From that one verse the rest of Scripture flows.

In Genesis we find the origins of the universe, of humanity, of marriage, of sin, of sacrifice, of the nations, and of the languages of the world. It has been called the "seed plot of the Bible," because every doctrine that grows tall in the rest of Scripture is first planted here. Creation. Fall. Covenant. Faith. Promise. Redemption. They all begin in Genesis.

To be made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26–27) means that human beings are uniquely able to relate to God, to exercise responsible dominion over creation, to create, to love, and to reason. That image was marred by the fall, but never erased — which is why human life still has inherent dignity, no matter how broken the life. The whole storyline of redemption, from Genesis to Revelation, is the story of God restoring that image in Christ (Romans 8:29; Colossians 3:10).

A. The Six Days of Creation: Three Faithful Views

Genesis 1 describes the work of creation in six days, followed by a seventh day of rest. Conservative evangelicals have offered several interpretations of these "days" while standing together on the central truth that God alone is the Creator and that what He made is good. Three views are most common:

• The Calendar (Literal) Day View — The Hebrew word yom with a numerical adjective and "evening and morning" indicates ordinary 24-hour days. The Sabbath command (Exodus 20:11) grounds the weekly cycle in creation week itself.
• The Day-Age (Progressive Creation) View — Reads the "days" as long, indefinite periods. Defenders point to Psalm 90:4 and 2 Peter 3:8, where a thousand years and a day are interchangeable from God's vantage point.
• The Framework (Revelatory) View — Reads the six days as a literary structure: three days of forming (light, waters, land) parallel three days of filling (lights, fish and birds, animals and man), framing creation as ordered, purposeful, and good.

All three views agree on what matters most: that God is the sovereign Creator, that creation was originally good, and that human beings — uniquely — are made in His image. The doctrine of creation does not finally rest on a particular timeline. It rests on the Creator.

B. The Fall: How the Story Broke

By Genesis 3 the story has broken. Adam and Eve, tempted by the serpent, eat the one fruit they were told to leave alone. The first thing that happens after their disobedience is not that they die — that comes later — but that they hide. The fellowship is fractured before the funeral arrives. Shame, blame, and fear walk into the garden where intimacy used to live, and they have lived there ever since.

And yet, in the very moment of judgment, God speaks a promise. He tells the serpent that "the seed of the woman" will one day crush his head, even as the serpent strikes the heel of that promised seed (Genesis 3:15). Theologians call this verse the Protoevangelium — the "first gospel." Before Adam and Eve have left the garden, God has already promised a Redeemer. The cross was not God's emergency response to a problem He did not see coming.

C. The Flood, Babel, and the Doors We Mark "Emergency Use Only"

By Genesis 6, sin has so corrupted the human race that God grieves He ever made them. The flood that follows is one of the great pictures of judgment in Scripture, but it is also a picture of grace. One man — Noah — finds favor in God's eyes, and through him a faithful remnant is preserved. That principle, of God preserving a believing few through judgment, will run through the whole Old Testament. From Noah to the prophets, the remnant is always small, but it is always saved.

When the waters recede, God meets Noah with a covenant. He promises that the flood will never again destroy the earth, and He sets the rainbow in the clouds as the sign of that promise (Genesis 9:11–13). Every storm since then carries that bow as a reminder: judgment has limits, but mercy does not.

After the flood, humanity quickly regroups in rebellion. At Babel they decide to build a tower up to heaven and "make a name" for themselves (Genesis 11:4). Notice the direction. Babel is man's religion: the human race climbing up to God by its own effort. Bethlehem is God's gospel: the Lord Himself coming down to man.

I have often thought that we still build little Babels in our own lives. We treat God the way we treat the door at the end of a hospital corridor — the one with the red sign that says "For Emergency Use Only. Alarm Will Sound." We are perfectly comfortable wandering the halls without Him until something terrifying happens, and then we slap that door open and expect Him to come running. But Genesis is showing us a different God: not an emergency exit, but the very air we are made to breathe. At Babel He scattered the languages so that the tower could not stand. At Pentecost, in Acts 2, He reversed the miracle — the same Spirit gave one message in many tongues, so that the gospel would gather what pride had once divided.

D. The Scarlet Thread Begins

Before Genesis ends, four scenes have been painted in red that the rest of the Bible will keep painting. Trace them together and you have what preachers have long called the Scarlet Thread — the unbroken line of innocent blood that runs from Eden to Calvary.

The first scene is in the garden itself. The moment Adam and Eve cover themselves with fig leaves, the Lord God Himself kills an animal and makes them garments of skin (Genesis 3:21). Sin requires a covering, and the covering requires a death. The first funeral is held in Eden, and God presides. Before any altar is built, before any priest is ordained, God has already shown that sin will be answered by substitutionary sacrifice — and that God Himself will be the one who provides it.

The second scene is one generation later. Abel brings the firstborn of his flock; Cain brings produce from the ground. The Lord receives Abel's bloody offering and rejects Cain's bloodless one (Genesis 4:4). Cain murders his brother, and Abel's blood cries from the ground — the first innocent blood in the world. Centuries later the writer of Hebrews will say that the blood of Jesus speaks a better word than the blood of Abel (Hebrews 12:24).

The third scene is on the deck of an ark whose door has just opened on a washed world. Noah's first act in the new earth is not a feast or a celebration. He builds an altar and offers burnt offerings to the Lord (Genesis 8:20). The thread is there at every new beginning, because every new beginning requires a death.

The fourth scene is on a mountain ridge called Moriah. We will return to that mountain in a moment, but for now: an old man raises a knife over his only son, and the knife is stopped at the last instant by a ram caught in the thicket (Genesis 22:13). Abraham names the mountain Jehovah-Jireh — "the Lord will provide." Two thousand years later, on that same ridge of hills, God will provide a real Lamb. The thread will run on — through the Passover blood on the doorposts, through Rahab's scarlet cord in the window at Jericho, through the temple sacrifices, through the Suffering Servant of Isaiah, through the pierced Messiah of Zechariah. But it begins here, in Genesis, where God's own hand killed the first animal in the garden.

E. The Patriarchs: Five Men, Five Pictures of the Christian Life

From Genesis 12 to the end of the book, the camera narrows from the whole human race to one family. God calls Abram out of Ur and gives him three great promises: a land, a people, and a blessing that will reach to all the nations of the earth. Abraham believed God, and that faith was credited to him as righteousness (Genesis 15:6) — the verse the apostle Paul will quote four times in the New Testament to explain how anyone, in any century, has ever been made right with God.

By the close of Genesis we have met five patriarchs — Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph — and the rest of the Bible will look like a long conversation about what God was doing in and through each of them. A pattern many preachers have noticed is that those five men together draw an unforgettable picture of the Christian life.

• Noah is a picture of regeneration. He passes through the waters of judgment and steps out into a new world, alive on the other side of death. That is what the new birth is.
• Abraham is a picture of justification by faith. He was pagan-born, seventy-five years old, and called out of his comfort zone to live in a tent in a land he had never seen — and he went. He believed God, and God counted it as righteousness. The apostle Paul will quote that one verse four times to explain how anyone, in any century, has ever been made right with God: not by climbing, not by earning, not by trying harder, but by believing.
  
  Abraham waited twenty-five years for the son God had promised him. When the boy finally came, God asked for him back. On Mount Moriah, Abraham raised the knife over his only son Isaac — and the knife was stopped by a ram caught in the thicket. What God wanted was Abraham's heart, not Isaac's life. I once read of a pastor whose wife lay dying, and that night he prayed, "Lord, she and I have been together so many years; I release her into Your hands." Around midnight he heard the Lord answer back: "Who are you to grant Me permission to take your wife? I do not need your permission. Just obey Me. Do not try to take My place." Abraham learned that on a mountain. Sometimes we learn it in a hospital corridor. And in that one act — a father willing to give his only beloved son — Abraham became the only man in Scripture who is a type of God the Father. Two thousand years later, on the same ridge of hills, the Father did not stop the knife. There was no ram in the thicket that day. There was only His Son.
• Isaac is a picture of sonship. He was the son of promise, the apple of his father's eye. The New Testament will say of every believer, "Beloved, we are God's children now" (1 John 3:2). Isaac shows us what that looks like.
• Jacob is a picture of sanctification. He spent the first half of his life trying to win by his wits, and ended up deceiving his father, his brother, and his father-in-law. On the night he heard that Esau was coming with four hundred armed men, Jacob was finally alone, and he wrestled until daybreak with a Stranger who turned out to be the Lord. The Stranger asked one question: "What is your name?" God was not having a memory lapse. He was making Jacob own who he was. When Jacob finally said the word — "Jacob," supplanter, deceiver — the Lord touched his hip, and Jacob limped for the rest of his life. That is sanctification. We do not become Israel by trying harder. We become Israel by being broken in the right place.
• Joseph is a picture of glorification. His life moved through four chapters: a favored son with prophetic dreams; a teenager thrown in a pit and sold by his brothers; a slave so faithful that Potiphar trusted him with everything — and so godly that when Potiphar's wife tried to seduce him, he did not just walk away, he fled and ran (Genesis 39:12). For that he was thrown in prison, where he stayed until his accurate interpretation of Pharaoh's dream lifted him from the dungeon to the second throne of Egypt. When his frightened brothers finally stood before him, the man who had every right to take revenge instead said: "You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good" (Genesis 50:20). That is what God has been doing on every page of Genesis, and on every page of your life.

IV. Key Themes — and Where They Are Heading

Genesis lays down the lines that the rest of the Bible will fill in. Creation: God is the source of everything that exists, and creation is good. Sin: human rebellion has fractured our relationship with God. Covenant: God binds Himself to His people with promises He alone can keep. Grace: He provides a way out of judgment that we could never provide for ourselves. Faith: Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness. Promise: the seed of the woman will come.

By the last chapter of Genesis, Israel is a small family of seventy souls living in Egypt. They do not know it yet, but the long centuries of slavery are about to begin. The stage is set for the exodus, the giving of the Law, and the formation of a nation. The Old Testament is not a museum of ancient stories. It is the long, patient, unbreakable love of God for His image-bearers — and every story, every law, every prophecy is leaning forward, waiting for the One who will come and put the broken image of Adam back together in Himself.

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