Welcome to another episode of the Small Group Toolbox. And today we're starting a new series on the Bible, basically, because it's really common in small group ministry to like not be heaps confident about the Bible. We're in this role of leading studies, teaching the Bible, facilitating Bible discussions. And we often wonder like, do I know the Bible well enough? And yeah, should I really be here? But yeah, what can I do about that? So I think on the whole, most group leaders have a pretty good understanding of the Bible. But it always helps to learn a bit more. so this is part of what this podcast series is about. I'm hoping to do like a podcast on every book of the Bible. And just as we go through, give you a bit of a feel of what's going on in these different books and what it's like to read them and things you can learn and look out for.
Now, of course, there's a lot of great stuff out there on the Bible and understanding it better. So I would often recommend to people, God's Big Picture by Vaughan Roberts, a great little book. The new Bible commentary will tell you a lot about each book of the Bible. On the podcasting world, I love Nancy Guthrie's podcast, which is called Help Me Teach the Bible. And she pretty much has something on every book of the Bible with speaking to experts, Bible commentary writers and preachers and so on. So that's really good. But and also like the more college PTC courses, love those. A lot of great stuff out there on how to learn the Bible more. But I think it's good you know, just to hear from a regular pastor, maybe it's I'm a familiar voice to you. And so if you find this helpful, great, we'll look at a few different books of the Bible. But here we go, let's get into it.
So first one is Genesis. So we're just going to spend 10 minutes looking at Genesis in a way that's helpful for you in your own Bible reading and learning. And yeah, we'll see where we go. So Genesis, obviously, this is the first book of the Bible, Genesis just means the beginning. And it's really about a whole lot of beginnings. In my mind, I think Genesis kind of breaks up into three sections. You've got one to three, which is the creation, the creation of humanity in the fall, chapters one to three. Then you've got four to 11, which kind of about the spread of humanity leading up to the of Babel. Then you've got chapters 12 to 50, where we return again to a single family, Abraham and Sarah and their children, Isaac and Ishmael. Isaac gets married to Rebecca and on we go through Joseph. Three big sections and it's quite a lively book, easy to read, lots of action and things going on. People reading it or reading the Bible for the first time normally make good progress and get right into it. So let's have a look at those three sections, few big ideas, and then we'll draw a few conclusions at the end. So Genesis one to three, first big section, obviously starts with those famous words in verse one, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. And there we are from the word go, we just get big, big stuff. We've got God, this character appears. There's nothing about where he came from because, well, he's eternal. Nobody made God. He had just always was and is, and there he is here in verse one. And he's created the heavens and earth. He makes them. They didn't arise out of chaos or conflict or accidents or a mere radiation from God or anything like that.
It's a deliberate creation of the universe. And of course, there we read in Genesis 1 how God made the world in six days and the seventh day resting on that day. And the creation was good and beautifully made and there's loads we could look into there. In fact, you do find with Genesis, it's a book that people often go to, pastors often go to and preachers, when they're thinking about big ideas, major doctrines, foundational kind of things. So they will go back to Genesis and look at this is how our universe is made. This is the sort of things to take away from it. So Genesis one and two is great. And of course there we see humanity come in, made in God's image, given dominion over the earth, told to multiply. And we see there in Genesis two, kind of the first marriage between Adam and Eve. So a lot of foundational fundamental stuff there. In this first section, very quickly though, we get to the fall where the serpent tempts Adam and Eve into eating the fruit.
Rebelling against God and yes sin comes into the world and we have the fall they're excluded from the garden and death enters the world and everything like that. In these chapters there's a great little kind of gospel hint people sometimes talk about this as the proto gospel and that's in chapter 3 verse 15 which says where God speaks to the serpent and says I'll put enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers he will crush your head and you will strike his heel. Interesting little note there, just a conflict between the serpent and the offspring of the woman.
He would crush the offspring, would crush the serpent's head. Just a hint there that God will overcome evil in this world through a human. Just a hint there of the gospel. But that's Genesis 1-3, really foundational, lots of stuff going on there. Preachers will often do very slow series looking at all sorts of themes through Genesis 1-3. So we get to Genesis 4-11, which is where we have Cain and Abel and Noah and the spread of humanity and what we see there is kind of basically the spread of sin as we get many people and humans multiply but sin is sort of ever-present in the Noah story God sort of starts afresh with Noah and his family but even then their offspring fall into sin and trouble like that we end up in Babel which is kind of a unified rebellion against God which God brings to an end through the introduction of languages and there's more conflict there. So 4-11 is like a spread of sin and a few other themes come in there as well, human technology, science, the arts in some ways, but it's against God.
That brings us then to the third section, which is from 12 to 50, a long narrative section where we go back to a single family. It's interesting. We started with a family in Genesis 1 to 3, Adam and Eve. We go worldwide scope in 4 to 11. We come back to a family in Genesis 12 to 50, Abraham and Sarah.
The key thing there really is from chapter 12, a very foundational promise that God makes to Abraham. Genesis 12 verse 1 says, Lord had said to Abraham, go from your country, your people and your father's household to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you. I will make your name great and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and whoever curses you, will curse and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you.
All right, so that's a promise, but really foundational here for the big picture of the Bible. God is going to bless all peoples on earth. Like that blessing, it's a reversal of the curse thing that came through in Genesis three. There's a blessing and it's going to happen through an offspring again. Abraham's descendants is that little connection with the proto gospel, the offspring. It's going to be a blessing for all the nations of the earth. And that's a promise that God makes to Abraham. And that promise is kind of fleshed out, expanded on in a couple of covenants in for Abraham later in chapters 15 and 17 where God establishes this relationship between Abraham and his people and the mutual obligations on both sides God's commitment to these promises and drawing from Abraham a commitment to faith and trust and obedience to God so it's foundational kind of covenant stuff here.
But then the promise of many descendants starts to be fulfilled as Isaac is born and Jacob and then he has the many children with his four wives, 12 children or 12 sons and a daughter at least. that leads to conflict. There's conflict within their sons and Joseph is sold off into slavery to Egypt. And that's kind of where the story ends. At the end of Genesis, you've got Joseph, he passes away, he dies, but their family is there in Egypt safe from the famine and kind of multiplying.
So what are the themes from Genesis? What are we gonna benefit from if we read it? I think I'll just mention three. I think first one is we get as we read Genesis a really good grasp of creation, the big picture stuff that there is a God, there is a universe is made good, but it has fallen. We get these just this big fundamental worldview picture. You read Genesis, you're gonna pick that up. Secondly, we're gonna really come to know God as a promise maker and a promise keeper and a covenant maker and a covenant keeper. So God is relational, it commits to people, he speaks, he makes these promises. As you read Genesis you can't help keep reading and understanding that God, who he is, he's a promise keeper. And that's very spiritually helpful for us as Christians to have a clear grasp of God as someone who makes promises and keeps them. And then thirdly, think, particularly from the Joseph story, you see that this theme of God blessing many people through the one, blessing of the many through the one, because that's what happens with Joseph. Joseph saves many people. This is how the book ends pretty much actually in Genesis 50 when Joseph's brothers come and talk to him but he says to them about the whole selling into slavery thing he says in Genesis 50 verse 20, you intended to harm me but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done the saving of many lives.
There you see that great theme. God is in control. He sent someone special, an individual to save many lives. And of course, that's a theme we're gonna see throughout the Bible, but especially in Jesus and his death and resurrection for us, the saving of many lives. So there you go, very briefly, that's Genesis. It's pretty good read. Most people find it quite engaging, but as you read it, there's lots of good things to pick up on. This sense of creation, the big picture stuff, meeting God is a promise, a covenant maker and seeing God bless many through the one. So enjoy reading it and I look forward to the next podcast in this little series.