I did a sermon two Sundays ago called, “Should We Read Genesis Literally?”, in which I feared some would throw me out as a heretic:
Genesis, and the Creation account especially, can often make people feel like they have to choose between their faith or their rational mind when it comes to figuring out some of the strangest verses in the Bible.
What is typically lost when we read Genesis is the foundational approach needed for reading any book of that Bible and that is the essential question: What was the original author’s purpose for writing this book?
Pop quiz:
Do you know who wrote Genesis?
Do you know when it was written?
Do you know who it was written to and why?
If you don’t know the answers to these questions, you cannot read Genesis accurately and biblically. If we ignore the author’s original purpose for writing a book and we simply read it for the purposes we want, we are reading in an unbiblical way.
Moses and his scribes wrote Genesis in approximately 1450 B.C. Genesis 12 talks about Abraham, who lived in approximately 2100 B.C. Did you know Genesis was written 650 years after the time of Abraham? And who knows how many years after the time of Noah, Adam, and Eve? It was not a newspaper written for you this morning by Adam, Noah and Abraham, so don’t read it that way. It was written as a sermon to a specific congregation, who had just gone through some very traumatizing life experiences.
God revealed the truth of Genesis to Moses and his scribes after the Hebrew people had been freed from 400 years of slavery by being miraculously rescued from their Egyptian captors via the 12 plagues and the parting of the Red Sea. These people had no identity and worshiped the Egyptian gods. They had been enslaved in Egypt for 400 years! That is 5-7 generations of people! Abraham and Yahweh (God) were nothing more than faint myths and very distant memories. Assuming Yahweh had abandoned them and forgotten about them, they had no idea who they were, or what their purpose going forward was. So God gives them Genesis. If you were to preach a sermon to congregation with no faith, no identity, and no purpose, I bet I can guess exactly what you would preach to them: You would tell exactly how old the universe is, what the fossil records mean, and that dinosaurs were aboard Noah’s ark! All of their calamities would be solved and they would once again become the righteous people of God instantaneously.
I hope you get my point. My point is not to argue for or against a Young Earth Creationism or Intelligent Design or Creative Evolution…my point is that none of these things are the point of Genesis!
It’s fine to have intellectual discussions about these things, but what I typically see is people attempting to evangelize people to their viewpoint, rather than taking a humble view of Scripture that there are some things we simply don’t know, so let’s focus on the clear things that we do know, that God revealed to us so we can follow him (Sound familiar? See Deuteronomy 29:29). I always thought our job was to evangelize people to the saving love and forgiveness of Jesus, not how old the earth is?
And the worst part of this, and the reason I preached on this and am writing this blog, is because these arguments actually push so many people away from Jesus.
The fact is, people are basing if they should put their faith in the saving work of Jesus based on if there were dinosaurs on Noah’s ark or not and if they can bend their mind to agree to this. I don’t think this was ever God’s intention with his book about the salvation of the world.
The topic of the various theological views of creation have always been an accepted thing to talk about in academic seminary circles (i.e. see Grand Rapids Theological Seminary’s upcoming Talking Points about Creation in Scripture on March 18th, where my former profs Mike Wittmer and David Turner are speaking), but when it comes to church it feels like there is immense pressure to cater to the most conservative of the viewpoints, or else be labeled a heretic.
If this is the case, Crossroads must be a bunch of heretics because the response to my above sermon was overwhelmingly positive. We even had a guy in his 40s who finally accepted Christ that day because this issue was final thing holding him back.
The title of this post is purposefully written as a trick question. YES we are to read Genesis literally: Literally the way Moses wrote it; not the way we decide we want to read it, changing the message of the book, attempting to make it say things the original author never intended.
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Maybe I missed this but does Mosses ever say he was shown this from God? Other instances like burning bush or the birth of Jesus it’s clearly articulated how God spoke to the people involved.
And also there are a few other cultures around the same time of the writing of Genesis that have similar creation stories, could Moses be reselling a common story but telling it in a way that helps explain the God of Israel in a more parable-istic way?
Hey Zane, I comment on both of these in the actual sermon, it’s a little long but I’d encourage you to check it out when you get the chance. Dr. Bruce Waltke wrote Genesis: A Commentary and in it he says there is a good chance the source material Moses used was from the Egyptian library where he grew up (in the Egyptian palace) which is why the early biblical stories are similar to ancient myths. In a way, it was Moses writing history the way he understood history, rather than the way we do in 2013. This obviously isn’t the standard conservative theory in Christian circles, but Waltke is a very respected, orthodox guy (check his Wikipedia page!). My point isn’t to argue one view correct over another, but to show the different views so we can respect the orthodox ones, get past these issues, and figure out the message of Genesis, which we typically miss altogether.
On your other comment about does Moses say he was shown this from God, 3 thoughts: 1.) We assume he was shown the Genesis truths as he was the 10 Commandments on Mt. Sinai, as well his burning bush conversation, and at the tent (Exodus 33:7-11) where he and God would chit chat regularly, accompanied by pillar of cloud and all–we assume in the many many “face to face” talks he had with God that the truth of Genesis were revealed to him. I raised this question in the sermon: Did he use source material (like Luke), which is essentially what Waltke is saying, or was it straight up revealed to him (like John and the book of Revelation), like when he and God were talking in the tent, Mt. Sinai, etc.. My guess is it’s a mix of both. (key word: guess, we really don’t know for sure but I think can make educated guess based on the above) 2 other reasons we believe it’s God’s word: 2.) Jesus did, Matt. 5:17-19 3.)The original recipients did, and these were the eyewitnesses of the Exodus, and they always held Exodus and Genesis together as God’s word revealed to them–likely because they witnessed all of Moses’ “face to face” times with God
hope that helps some
I just got around to reading this one Noah. I applaud you for touching this thorny issue and doing a credible job besides.
I offer my views with a healthy chunk of Dead Sea salt. God can make this mystery plain to us when we meet Him. For what it is worth, I believe the creation story is probably meant to be understood literally as the local *re-creation* of the Middle East (the world as the ancient Hebrews knew it) following some disaster.
I suspect that there is an enormous time gap between Genesis 1:1 (the creation of the universe and most of history as science knows it) and 1:2 (the special creation of the Garden of Eden and its environs).
There are many problems with this theory, of course that can be handled to varying degrees of satisfaction. I rest my salvation on none of them since Christ is what really matters.
Thanks Brian, that is helpful. I believe that theory is called the “Gap Theory.” There are three that I’m familiar with: The Gap Theory, The Apparent Age Theory (what I suggest), and the Day Age Theory, which says that each “day” signified a really long time, i.e. millions of years for each day. I think it’s good to put all of these theories out there because it literally allows more people to put their faith in Jesus and be supernaturally transformed by his Spirit as a result. I’ve seen it on a number of occasions in my own church. That’s where my passion is for this. Genesis was never meant to be a barrier to Jesus, but that’s what it has become in today’s society.
Good post. No one twists and ignores scripture more than Ken Ham and Co. Genesis 1 says there is water above the sky and in the dome / firmament that is the sky sit the sun moon and stars. This is not a build manual for the universe. So the question What truths was the writer trying to convey?
Hi JR, that is the question! I write about that here: http://www.atacrossroads.net/should-we-read-genesis-literally/