Podcast Intro and Genesis Overview

This first episode introduces the host and what the listener can expect from the Beyond The Basics podcast. It also introduces an overview of the book of Genesis.

Transcript:

Welcome to the Beyond the Basics Bible Study Podcast. I am your host, Dan Snyder, and I am very excited that you are able to join me today for this very first episode of Beyond the Basics, where we will be going through the Bible chapter by chapter, from Genesis to Revelation, one chapter at a time.

First, a little bit about me so you know who you're listening to. I am married to a beautiful wife, have a 15-month-old son, and a crazy dog, and we live in St. Petersburg, Florida. Originally from Minnesota, I work in construction, moved down here for a job, and loved it here, so we've been here about three and a half years. I am a worship leader at a local house of prayer here in St. Petersburg. I've been leading worship for, oh gosh, probably about 12 years now. My wife and I are also deacons at our local church. We lead a house group.

I've been following the Lord most of my life. I grew up in the church. I got into my mid-20s and started following the Lord again and ended up going to a conference down in Kansas City. I went to Kansas City for this conference and I remember one night listening to one of the speakers, his name is Allen Hood, some of you might be familiar with him, and he was preaching on Revelation 4 and 5, and I remember very, very clearly the Bible just really coming alive to me at that moment, and I have been a student of the Bible ever since then. It felt as if I was reading the Bible for the very first time that night. And I love the Bible and I love Jesus.

So I am a disciple of Jesus and I am a student of the Bible. I am not, however, a scholar. I'm not a Bible scholar. I've never been to seminary. And I'm not an expert in Hebrew or Greek languages. So I've studied the Bible a lot. I've spent many, many years studying the Bible on my own, using various resources, learning how to study the Bible, but I've never been to seminary, so that means I am not going to approach this podcast as a teacher to a student. I am not telling you that what I am saying all the time is 100% right, and because I don't know Hebrew or Greek I will in most cases stay away from speculation on what much of the original languages mean unless I am very certain that the sources that I use are correct.

So a little bit about my approach to the Bible regarding interpretation. First of all, obviously the Bible was written mostly by Jewish people. It is a human book that was inspired by God. It was not written down by God and dictated to humans. The authors of the Bible did not go into a trance and write down directly what they heard from God. That's not how the Bible was written. It was written by humans. These humans wrote down these words that we read today, and these words were inspired by God to convey a message about God.

I believe that there are many applications of scripture, but there is only one interpretation. In other words, there is one plain meaning in the text. And there are many different ways that we can apply that meaning to our lives. I don't believe that much of scripture is symbolic in the sense that many scholars have interpreted it. I believe there are symbols, there are images that represent certain things, but the Bible is very clear when those are used. And that brings me to my next point.

The Bible should be taken literally. Considering the genre, of course, unless indicated otherwise by the Bible itself. So, for example, poetry is going to use metaphors and different imagery. Obviously, poetry is not always intended to be taken literally, but it's going to be clear when that is because we know we're reading poetry. For example, when the book of Joel talks about a flood overtaking the the nation of Israel. Well, we can tell by context that that flood is referring to an army of human beings, not a literal flood. And then we also have apocalyptic literature, which is highly, highly symbolic. But what we often find in apocalyptic literature is there is an angel that describes the symbols and what the symbols represent. And I think many scholars, many biblical scholars have done us a disservice by interpreting apocalyptic literature as only symbolic and leaving it up to all sorts of different interpretation when the Bible offers that interpretation right there for us. We don't have to guess.

Next point, all scripture points to Jesus. Highly, highly important when interpreting the Bible. We should be reading, especially the Old Testament, with a mind that it is pointing to Jesus. And that is what Jesus believed himself. Luke 24:27 says: When Jesus encountered the disciples on the road to Emmaus and he talked to them, it says, beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the scriptures concerning himself.

So we need to consider what the Bible is saying about Jesus as we read. Context is very important. When we read a verse, we can't just take that verse in whatever way it seems to be saying as a standalone verse. We need to consider the sentence that it's in. We need to consider the paragraph that it's in. We need to consider the chapter that it's in. We need to consider the book that it's in. And then we need to consider that it's part of the story of the entire Bible. And we need to take into account ancient Near East culture as well. All those factors are going to go into the context of whatever we're reading.

The purpose of the Bible, speaking of the context of the entire Bible, the purpose is to tell the redemptive story of Israel which is also the redemptive story of the world. In other words, the Bible starts in a garden with a man and a woman. It all goes wrong. And from that point on the world needs to be redeemed. And God chooses the nation of Israel to do that. And Jesus is at the center of that entire story. So when reading the entire Bible, that is the story of the Bible.

Also, the purpose of the Bible for us, it's intended to be used for meditation. Psalm 119 verses 97 through 99 says, "'Oh, how I love your law! It is my meditation all the day. Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies, for it is ever with me. I have more understanding than all my teachers, for your testimonies are my meditation.'"

Many people approach the Bible as a self-help book and that is not what it is. The Bible is there for us to learn about God and learn about God's purpose for humanity and learn about Jesus and gain wisdom, but it is not a self-help book.

The intention for this podcast is, first of all, I want to highlight important themes in each chapter. Themes that we're going to see throughout the Bible. I want to make sure that those stick out. I want to provide a basic level of understanding for each chapter. So we're going to go through an overview each chapter as we get to it.

I want to highlight how each chapter points to Jesus. As I mentioned, especially in the Old Testament, it was written with Jesus in mind. Now the Old Testament writers did not know that they were writing about Jesus, but Jesus himself believed that all the scriptures pointed to him. And so I want to highlight how each chapter points to Jesus. I want to help you see how each chapter points to Jesus.

I want to raise questions the text asks questions of us. It forces us to ask questions of ourselves. And so, I want to raise those questions as we go through. I want to prompt further study. I want to inspire you, the listener, to study deeper. I want to inspire a passion and a desire in you to know more about what the Bible is saying about God and as a result, know God deeper. Again, as I mentioned, I'm not claiming an authoritative teaching. I am not a scholar. I am just a guy that loves the Bible and wants other people to love the Bible too. So that's my intention.

What you can expect for each episode. What you can expect is we're going to go, as I mentioned, we're going to go through and do an overview of the chapter to start off. And then we'll go in depth. And it's not going to be verse by verse. Some chapters are going to be closer to verse by verse. Other chapters, we're going to break down various aspects of the chapters in different ways. So we'll go in depth. And then after that, there will be a section of how it points to Jesus for the Old Testament chapters only. Obviously, the New Testament chapters is it's already all about Jesus very blatantly. So there's no need for that for that section in the New Testament chapters. And then we'll go through some questions for reflection. I will ask some questions that I've come up with. Hopefully it prompts you to come up with even more questions on your own.

And then we'll wrap up the episode. Now I do have a study guide that is available for purchase on my website. And that website is www.beyondthebasics.blog. You can go on that website, you can do a couple different things. You can purchase the individual study guide for the episode you just listened to directly from the website for $2. You can also subscribe. You can receive every study guide automatically every time I publish an episode. And that is $6 a month. A $6 a month subscription. So you can do one of those two things.

And on that study guide, there will be questions for further study. Those will not be things that I go over in the episode. Those will be on the study guide only. So that study guide that's going to entail all my notes that I use. It's going to have all the verses that I use. It's going to have those questions for reflection on there. And then it's going to have further study.

So let's get into the book of Genesis. First, we'll talk about the author. The author, obviously, most likely is Moses. Now, we know that Moses was not alive during the period of the book of Genesis, so the question is, how did Moses obtain this information? I think there's two most likely scenarios how Moses got this information.

First would be oral tradition that would be handed down from his ancestors. Now we know that one tradition is known to be handed down and that would be Joseph's bones. Now in Exodus 13 verse 19, it says Moses took the bones of Joseph with him, for Joseph had made the sons of Israel solemnly swear, saying, "God will surely visit you and you shall carry up my bones with you from here."

So Joseph had asked his sons that when they leave Egypt, that they would take his bones with them. And that request had been passed down through the generations until it made it to Moses' generation. So we know that those traditions were passed down. Related to this possibility is we know that Egyptian coffins contained inscriptions, sometimes from the Book of the Dead. So it's very possible that Joseph's coffin could have contained inscriptions from or when Moses took Joseph's coffin with him out of Egypt, written on there could have been his family history.

Another possibility that I believe is that he could have gotten this information directly from God. Now I know that I said earlier that the Bible is not dictated by God and handed down to a human who then just wrote it down. It's possible that may actually be false in certain sections of Genesis, especially the first chapter or so. Now the reason I think this could be the case is in Exodus 33, starting in verse 21, it says, then the Lord says, "Behold, there is a place by me and you shall stand there on the rock and it will come about while my glory is passing by, that I will put you in the cleft of the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will take my hand away and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen."

So what that's saying is that the Lord placed Moses in the cleft of the rock and he passed by Moses. Now Moses could not see his face because God covered him up. But as soon as God passed him, Moses could see God's back. Now what do you think the back side of an infinite God looks like? Could it potentially show God's history? I think so. So I think that Moses got much of his information for the book of Genesis in that one encounter with God when he viewed God's glory or his history.

Who is the book of Genesis written for? It was written for the Exodus generation and also for future generations, knowing that this would be compiled into the book of the law and it was intended to be meditated on. The purpose of the book of Genesis is to provide the beginning of the nation of Israel. So again, present family history, present the problem facing humanity, which is that creation is good, but it was destroyed through man's sin. But God had a plan to bring recreation through one family, which is the family of Abraham.

So a quick outline of the book, chapters 1 through 11 describes the creation of the world, the fall of man and angels. It reveals our need for a seed to set things right in the words of the book of Genesis itself. And many of the themes that we find throughout scripture are found in chapters 1 through 3. These are foundational chapters for understanding the entire rest of the Bible. If we don't know these chapters, if we don't know this book, it will be much more difficult to understand the rest of the Bible.

Chapters 12 through 23 tells the story of Abraham. God calls Abraham out of the city of Ur, of the Chaldeans. He promises him a child and an inheritance in Canaan. And we follow the growth of Abraham's faith in God's promises. And then chapters 24 through 27, we read about Isaac carrying the promise forward. Chapters 28 through 36, we read about Jacob and his struggles with trusting God and the origin of the 12 tribes of Israel. And then in chapters 37 through 50, we read about the story of Joseph, his life, the trials and persecution that he went through, and how he was used by God to deliver Israel from a deadly famine and at that point was reunited with his family.

Thank you very much for listening. I look forward to doing this podcast with you. I look forward to going through the Bible with you. I would love to hear your feedback. Please check out my website www.beyondthebasics.blog that's www.beyondthebasics.blog. Leave a comment. Tell me what you think of the podcast. Tell me what you think of the blog. If you have any suggestions, I'm all ears. I'd love to hear your feedback. Anything that I can do to improve and make this podcast better for you, I would love to hear it.

Thanks for listening.

Sources:

Stewart, Don. “How Could Moses Have Written Genesis?” Blue Letter Bible, https://www.blueletterbible.org/faq/don_stewart/don_stewart_677.cfm.