Genesis means beginning, and, appropriately, it is the beginning book of the Bible. Its author is Moses, and the book is called the First Book of Moses, the first book of the Torah, or instruction. The beginning of the universe is related as the drama of God’s creative act is unfolded before us. God spoke, God willed, and the universe came into existence. It obeyed the command of God. The evolutionary hypothesis presents an explanation for the existence of matter that is atheistic, that is, without reference to God. Genesis presents God’s own self-disclosure for the presence of the universe.

God created man in His image and placed him in a beautiful garden under a covenant which provided that man, Adam, would obey Him. Adam and his wife Eve violated this covenant, and, as a consequence, lost their fellowship with God and were driven from the garden. But God pronounced a prophecy, often called the original gospel, in which he told the serpent who had induced Adam to sin that the seed of woman would crush his head. This was a prophecy of the work of the second Adam, Jesus Christ, who on the cross would destroy the power of the devil, redeem man to fellowship with God, and accomplish for man what sin had made it impossible for him to do.

Genesis continues to tell us of the beginning of civilization. Man, after having eaten from the tree of knowledge, was now endowed with wisdom and skills. Originally he put these to work usefully to build great civilizations, but later his fallen nature, the result of the sin of Adam who represented the human race, was manifested in depraved behavior. Every imagination of his heart was only evil continually, and God punished mankind by a universal flood, saving only Noah and his family to repopulate the earth. After the flood, man continued in his sin and depravity, and history tells us of the decline in quality of subsequent civilizations. Yet God made a covenant with Noah that He would never again destroy the earth with a flood, and gave the rainbow as a covenant sign.

Later God called a man whom he chose named Abram from Ur, directed him to go to the land we know today as Israel, and made a covenant with him that he would give him descendants, would give these descendants the land and make of them a great nation, and in his seed would bless all nations of the earth. The final part of this covenant promise was fulfilled in Jesus Christ whose redemptive work provides a blessing for people of every tribe, language, people, and nation. God sealed this covenant with Abraham by moving between the segmented halves of sacrificial animals, promising His own demise if He did not fulfill His word. Abraham believed God’s promise, and Moses writes that it was credited to him as righteousness. Paul later tells us that we, as covenant children of Abraham, are justified by faith in the same way: we believe in Christ and it is credited to us as righteousness (Rom. 4).

The rest of Genesis, even the rest of the Bible, relates God’s dealings with the children of Abraham, either Abraham’s children by natural birth or by spiritual birth. We read of God’s fulfilling His word and giving Abraham (Abram’s name was changed to mean father of many nations), the promised son Isaac, choosing Isaac for the one through whom the promise would be given, choosing the younger son of Isaac, Jacob, and providing Jacob with twelve sons who were the ancestors of the twelve tribes of Israel.

Thus in Genesis we have the account of creation, the fall, and the beginning of God’s redemptive work, an unfolding covenant of grace, by which He will redeem a people for Himself. The story truly doesn’t end until Revelation, where we see fully how the tree of life and the beautiful garden, the fellowship and life with God, lost in the account of Genesis, is now forever restored in Jesus Christ.