A Glance at Genesis

This is the last of four posts of A Glance at Genesis. I saved the best for last! I would love to go through the entire book, but it is 50 chapters long, so I settled for a glance. My prayer is that this will be a help to anyone who decides to read it. We’ve already seen: Book of Beginnings (here), The Outline of Genesis (here), and The Theme of Genesis (here) Today

Tracing the Promise of Christ

The saddest day in the history of the world is the fall of man recorded in Genesis 3. In that very same chapter we find the promise of a Deliverer, a Savior. This is the Coming One, the Messiah, the Christ. We can literally trace the promise through Genesis.

3:15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
It is interesting that the first promise of a Deliverer is made to the serpent. This tells us he will be a human.

The righteous line is traced through Seth down to Noah and the time of the flood, the from Noah through Shem down to Terah and his son Abram.

12:1 Now the Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee:
2 And I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing:
3 And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee: and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.
As I have said before, this is where things get serious. This a momentous event in the history of the world! God calls Abram and makes six promises to him:
- I will give you a land
- I will make of you a great nation
- I will bless you
- I will make your name great
- I will bless them that bless you and curse them that curse you
- In thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed

As we have already seen, this is the beginning of Israel as a nation and the title deed to their land. The last promise is the promise of the Deliverer: In thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Christ will be the son of Abraham.

Abram firstborn son was by Hagar, his wife’s handmaid. His name was Ishmael. But

17:15 And God said unto Abraham, As for Sarai thy wife, thou shalt not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall her name be. [God had already changed Abram’s name to Abraham]
16 And I will bless her, and give thee a son also of her: yea, I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations; kings of people shall be of her.
17 Then Abraham fell upon his face, and laughed, and said in his heart, Shall a child be born unto him that is an hundred years old? and shall Sarah, that is ninety years old, bear?
18 And Abraham said unto God, O that Ishmael might live before thee!
19 And God said, Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son indeed; and thou shalt call his name Isaac: and I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his seed after him.
The promise is to Abraham through Isaac.

26:24 And the LORD appeared unto him the same night, and said, I am the God of Abraham thy father: fear not, for I am with thee, and will bless thee, and multiply thy seed for my servant Abraham's sake.
God renews the promise to Isaac, but before this he had an interesting experience

25:21 And Isaac intreated the LORD for his wife, because she was barren: and the Lord was intreated of him, and Rebekah his wife conceived.
22 And the children struggled together within her; and she said, If it be so, why am I thus? And she went to enquire of the LORD.
23 And the LORD said unto her, Two nations are in thy womb, and two manner of people shall be separated from thy bowels; and the one people shall be stronger than the other people; and the elder shall serve the younger.
In answer to Isaac's prayer Rebekah conceives and behold it is twins! Her pregnancy must have been difficult because she prayed about it, and the LORD revealed to her she is giving birth to two nations and the elder shall serve the younger. This is Esau and Jacob. Christ will come through Jacob – the Coming One will be of the children of Israel, an Israelite.

28:12 And he dreamed, and behold a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and behold the angels of God ascending and descending on it.
13 And, behold, the Lord stood above it, and said, I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed;
14 And thy seed shall be as the dust of the earth, and thou shalt spread abroad to the west, and to the east, and to the north, and to the south: and in thee and in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed.
The promise is renewed with Jacob. He goes on to lead quite an interesting life – he has two wives, two concubines, and thirteen children! Twelve sons. They become the twelve tribes of Israel. We keep bouncing back and forth between Jacob and Israel, that’s because in 32:28 God changed his name to Israel.

Jacob has twelve sons and in chapter 49 he prophesies over each of them and reveals the one through whom the Deliverer will come:

49:8 Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise: thy hand shall be in the neck of thine enemies; thy father's children shall bow down before thee.
9 Judah is a lion's whelp: from the prey, my son, thou art gone up: he stooped down, he couched as a lion, and as an old lion; who shall rouse him up?
10 The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be.
11 Binding his foal unto the vine, and his ass's colt unto the choice vine; he washed his garments in wine, and his clothes in the blood of grapes:
12 His eyes shall be red with wine, and his teeth white with milk.
According to v 10 Christ will be of the tribe of Judah, a Jew.

By the end of Genesis we know: Messiah will be a human, a son of Abraham, a son of Isaac, a son of Jacob (an Israelite), of the tribe of Judah (a Jew). In order to be Christ, Jesus must be of Judah, of Jacob, of Isaac, of Abraham. It is no coincident that the New Testament opens with these words (Matthew 1:1-2)

The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham begat Isaac; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat Judas and his brethren.

Jesus of Nazareth is the Deliverer, the Coming One, the Christ!

My favorite passage in Genesis is from Jacob’s prophecy over his sons:

49:18 I have waited for thy salvation, O LORD.
He had a lively hope of Christ. But, is this really a reference to Christ? After Jesus was born his parents took to the temple to dedicate him to the Lord. We read in Luke 2

25 And, behold, there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon; and the same man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel: and the Holy Spirit was upon him.
26 And it was revealed unto him by the Holy Spirit, that he should not see death, before he had seen the Lord's Christ.
27 And he came by the Spirit into the temple: and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him after the custom of the law,
28 Then took he him up in his arms, and blessed God, and said,
29 Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word:
30 For mine eyes have seen thy salvation,
31 Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people;
32 A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.

Yes, Jacob was talking about Christ! Yes, Jesus is the Christ!