Genesis and Jesus
In John chapter 5, Jesus is providing powerful testimony to the truth of who He is. He concludes His testimony with words that reveal His opinion of how we are to read and interpret Genesis. John 5:45-47 says, “But do not think I will accuse you before the Father. Your accuser is Moses, on whom your hopes are set. If you believed Moses, you would believe Me, for he wrote about Me. But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?” (NIV). Moses wrote Genesis. Jesus places belief in what Moses wrote about Him as a prerequisite to believing what Jesus says about Himself. Observational science affirms the historical account provided through Genesis. That is a wonderful truth. However, even more wonderful than that is the words of God telling us to believe that what Genesis has to say is trustworthy and true. Jesus, God in the flesh, says that Genesis is about Him.
This isn’t the only time Jesus appeals to the authority of Genesis to teach about a present day issue. The Pharisees once again put Jesus to the test. We read it in Matthew 19. This time they have chosen the topic of marriage and divorce. How does Jesus respond to their test? Matthew 19:4-6 provides us His response. ” ‘Haven’t you read’, He replied, ‘that at the beginning the Creator made them male and female,’ and He said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore, what God has joined together, let man not separate.’ ” Jesus is quoting the second chapter of Genesis. If Genesis is just a myth, than there is no authority in it to be used as a defense for the Biblical instruction on divorce. Clearly, Jesus treats Genesis as truth and authoritative over the current day issues of the church. What Jesus states as truth is truth enough for me.
This is what makes visiting the Grand Canyon so extraordinary for followers of Christ. We can read the Genesis account of our beginnings then look up from God’s remarkable word and gaze clearly and confidently at the direct result of what we just read.
PRAISEALLUJIAH!
Jon
