10 Weeks in Genesis: Lesson 1
INTRODUCTION:
I am so glad you have decided to embark on this ten-week journey with us through Genesis. "Genesis" means "the Beginning," and we are thrilled to find the beginning of our faith outlined in that first book of our Bibles. A solid understanding of Genesis will help shape nearly everything we learn in the Scriptures. I hope this study is a blessing and an encouragement to you, whether you do it on your own or with a group of friends. Each of the ten lessons corresponds to a video from my Simpler Bible - Bible in a Year course.
-Ryan
HOW TO DO THE STUDY:
This study is designed to help your group explore the book of Genesis together in a meaningful way. Below is a suggested format, but feel free to adjust it to fit your group’s needs. Each session takes about 45 minutes to an hour.
Suggested Group Format:
Watch the Video (12 min) – Start with a selected Bible in a Year video that introduces the passage.
Read the Written Content – Go through the study material together.
Review Key Takeaways – Summarize the main points for clarity.
Discuss – Use the provided questions to spark conversation.
Pray – Begin with the written prayer and invite others to add their own.
*For a shorter session, you can skip the group reading by having members read it beforehand and focus on the video, key takeaways, discussion, and prayer. However you choose to engage, this study is designed to help you grow deeper in God’s Word.
WEEK ONE: WATCH EPISODE 1 FROM BIBLE IN A YEAR STUDY
GOD THE CREATOR:
Genesis One is a beautiful chapter, but we Christians might wonder why the Bible doesn't start with the story of Jesus. Why aren't the first pages of our journey the records of John or the story of the crucifixion? The answer is more than just one of history and tradition. In this first chapter of the Scripture, we meet God, the Creator. This is not just a story told by feeble-minded followers, not just an analogy to help someone grasp impossible thoughts on creation. This is the story of God, unfolding for us over 1189 chapters and about 31,100 verses. Unless we accept God as the creator, how can we ever be expected to accept him as merciful, loving, just, righteous, or holy? If God is not the creator, why would we expect him to be able to save humankind, the pinnacle of creation? So we meet God as creator, and we believe it, and in so doing, we come to the place where we acknowledge him as the source and standard of all truth. We are not the creator; therefore, we can not be the standard for what we hold as true.
I have planted my toes on the sandy beaches along the northern edge of Spain. I have watched hundreds of silverfish dance in aerial ballets in muddy ponds in India while wild peacocks raced across rice fields. I've spent a week at the base of an active volcano in Indonesia. I've canoed quiet rivers in Florida, where river otters playing alongside us frightened me in my youth. (I was expecting an alligator) I've plucked wild strawberries from a trail in Oregon and plunged my face into crystal-clear river water to cool off. I've climbed cliff faces in North Carolina. (I was clumsy and slow, and my shoe filled up with blood) I've rafted rivers in Colorado and Canada. I've jumped into a cool lake nestled in green hills on a dare while in the Czech Republic. I have watched hundreds of "shooting stars" dart across the sky from the comfort of my trampoline one summer night in the early nineties. I've sledded down snow-covered hills in Wyoming. I've camped at Hermit Peak in New Mexico and listened to the rain pelt my tent throughout the night. I've watched a thunderhead build far across the flatlands of West Texas and could smell the rain on the wind half an hour or more before it arrived. I once counted 84 lightning strikes in the space of sixty seconds. I snorkeled in Hawaii along a reef. (Though I was a youth and ended up heading back to the boat after a huge fish was eager to get the dog food we had been feeding to the angel fish) I love these adventures and the many others I've had. I wouldn't trade them for anything, and I hope to have many more.
You don't have to twist my arm to convince me there is a creator. I've believed it as long as I can remember. This world is not just a chance happening. Your fingerprints, which are completely unique to you, are not random occurrences. The tiny specks of color in your eye that you haven't even considered in years aren't there by accident. Every hair on your head is numbered, and every breath in your lungs is calculated. We serve an amazing, creative God. He is not just the wellspring of all life but also the source of all truth. Consider for a moment that 1 John 4:8 reminds us, "God is love." Or Galatians 5:22 that tells us the fruit of the Spirit is, in part, "love." Think about this for a minute. God has eternally existed as Father, Son, and Spirit. Love exists in the personhood of God irrespective of creation. That means love existed before the world was formed out of chaos, before light was spoken into existence, before the seas and land were formed, before plants, before the fish in the ocean or the birds in the air or the beasts of the field, before Adam and Eve. That matters a lot! It means that love, and for that matter the rest of the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians, exists without reference to mankind at all. Love is WHO GOD IS! Then we come along and make up our own rules. We take who God is and what he has made and twist it to suit our opinions and desires. We take God and make him manageable. We fashion God and the things of God into a likeness that suits our ideas. We make ourselves the creator and abandon the God of heaven.
This is why we must hold fast to God as the creator. I need God to be the creator. I need him to be the standard for life: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. I need to trust in God as bigger than me and more reliable than my own heart and mind. I need to know that truth doesn't ultimately depend upon me or my tiny worldview. And if there isn't a singular standard of truth, a fountainhead of life and love, then each of the Eight Billion people on this planet will turn to themselves as the standard of truth. Eventually, truth is a foregone idea, and everything becomes subjective. And once the truth becomes a subjective reality, we come to the death of anything true until we turn again to the creator and sustainer of all things.
Jonah was a wayward prophet running from God's call on his life. God chased him down with a storm and swallowed him up with a great fish. When Jonah told his sailing companions that he was fleeing the "God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land," they panicked. Why would Jonah disobey the creator of land and sea?
When Job forsook humility and began to charge God with fault, God shook the heavens and answered Job's complaint out of the whirlwind. God systematically reminds Job of his proper place before the creator of heaven and earth. "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? What are its measurements? Who shut in the sea? Do you command the morning? Have you walked in the recesses of the deep? Do you bring rain on the dry ground? Do you feed the lions? Do the ravens cry out to you for food? Does the lightning report to you?" Close to 100 unique questions God asks Job, all so that Job will remember that God is high and holy, the creator of all things.
Or think of Paul's sermon in Acts 17 among the idolatrous pagans. "What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man." His introduction to the truth of salvation begins by acknowledging that God is the creator.
The opening paragraph of the Gospel of John reminds us that Jesus, fully God, is the creator of everything, for nothing that has been made was made without him. In Colossians, we are told Jesus "upholds everything by the word of his power" as the creator of all things.
We don't come to a God who is limited in his power, or one who had no bearing on the stars in their orbit, the seas monsters of the deep, or the blood type coursing through our veins. He is intimately acquainted with all that he has made. There is a fish in the recesses of the sea that has never been seen by human eyes that exists for his glory. A stone at the base of a mountain has been brushed by rain and snow and explored by all manners of creeping things that I will never rest my foot on. It is there for the glory of the creator. I sit in my living room with my feet propped up as my 1980s playlist fills the background, writing these words for you that perhaps you and I might just enjoy our God a little more deeply tomorrow than we do today, and I may never know your name. But there is a creator in heaven who does. This breath, this day, and this moment is for his glory, and I gladly submit myself to the creator of all things. He is the giver of life. He is full of love and mercy. He has secured our salvation through Jesus. He knew each of my days before one of them came into existence. My confidence in God as a faithful creator gives me confidence to walk with him today.
KEY TAKEAWAYS:
God is creator of all things.
If we cannot accept God as the creator, we will never accept him as the provider of salvation.
Since God is before all things he can also be trusted as the source of all truth.
DISCUSSION:
What favorite memory/memories do you have of an experience in creation? When was the last time you were made to be in awe of God because of creation?
What jumped out to you from the video today? Was there anything in the video you had not previously considered?
It isn't just Jonah, Job, Paul, and John that reference God as the creator. David does this in the Psalms. The prophets do this in their writings. Moses does this in the opening books of the Bible. Why do you think the Biblical authors spent so much time showing and reminding their audience that Yahweh God is the creator?
How might you find encouragement in your daily life as you reflect on God as the creator?
Do you think the similarities between John 1:1 and Genesis 1:1 are significant? Why or why not?
What is a key takeaway from today's study you hope to remember?
PRAYER:
Take a moment to thank God/Jesus for being a faithful creator. Ask God to help you trust him as the source and foundation for all truth.
