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Our Christian formation classes are taught by the clergy of Church of the Incarnation (Dallas, TX). Journey with us as each season unfolds.
Let's pray. Father, I thank you for this beautiful day you've given us, this beautiful fall day. Thank you for, again, our opportunity to study your word. I thank you for these individuals who are here to participate in that study all this semester. And as we wind it down today, I just pray that we would be faithful readers and doers of your word and that we would go out into the world with that which we have taken from this book and receive and continue to take and receive throughout our lives.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:And we love you and thank you Lord and pray these things in Christ's name and by the spirit. Amen. Alright, come on in. Yeah, this is our final class of the semester. So we are wrapping up our study of Genesis today and I wanted to sort of start yeah, come on in, there's sheets out there.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:I wanted to start today by just sort of a little bit looking back and we think about the book of Genesis. It's certainly one of the longer books of the Old Testament, but it moves pretty quickly as you kind of move through the narrative of the book of Genesis. And it has a way of sort of moving and keeping you going throughout the book in a way that can be it can be easy to sort of miss how much time has elapsed in this book of Genesis. And so here we are in the final sort of story or episode of the book of Genesis, these last 14 chapters of the book. And you look back at the book of Genesis and by the end of the book of Genesis, in Genesis 50, you see the death of Joseph, okay?
Dr. Stephen Bagby:And so that occurs around the year eighteen hundred BC. But if we trace back the history of the book, we're covering about a period of at least twelve hundred years and more likely around two thousand years of history with all these timelines and genealogies and nations coming and going. And so as we think about the book of Genesis, we've kind of walked through about two thousand years of history. So you just want to just like sit with that for a minute and go, okay, if that were to be today that Genesis that Joseph died, okay, what would we have covered in terms of time and history as we look back? I mean obviously that puts us right back in the New Testament times, right?
Dr. Stephen Bagby:Roman Empire, all of that. A lot has happened and I say that because what's interesting about the Joseph narrative is that it's the final 14 chapters of the book, okay? The Joseph narrative is 28% of the book of Genesis, okay? So the book of Genesis has been moving along very quickly throughout the centuries and then it just like slows down. It slows down pretty dramatically when we see the life of Jacob and when we see the life of Joseph especially.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:And to me that communicates that the Lord wants us to really focus on this person of Joseph, on his family, on his circumstances, on all of the dynamics going on, and ultimately on the Lord, on all of his provision, his providence over this situation that we have in the Joseph story. So again, 28% of your book of Genesis is the Joseph story, which I find pretty remarkable, these 14 final chapters of the book. And so what is the Joseph story? We've all kind of read it in different contexts throughout our lives. We've all interacted with this story.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:You have Joseph, one of the sons of Jacob, who is a younger son. He's got a lot of older brothers. He starts having these dreams. You see in chapter 37, early in the narrative, he starts having these dreams and these dreams seem to rub his brothers wrong and even his dad's sort of like, what's going on here? And so he has these dreams that his brothers are going to perhaps bow down to him, that he's going to be this certain figure in this narrative and so his brothers are jealous, they're jealous also that his dad favored him over the other brothers, that he was given this robe or this coat that was a sign of favor over his brothers and so that's something that we sort of have to wrestle with as well, sort of like this favored child, the youngest again, we see this sort of flipping over that's occurring in the book of Genesis, this turning over of norms in society.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:And so the brothers get jealous, they sell him into ultimately slavery into Egypt and he is sold by his brothers. And they make up this story about how, you know, there's blood on his coat, this must have been he must have been eaten by an animal or something like that. And so Joseph is sold by his brothers and this kind of takes us through chapter 37 and as we kind of move through our narrative, we then see Joseph down in Egypt. And while he's in Egypt, he is eventually he was, you know, he has this encounter, this tense situation with Potiphar's wife and then he's thrown into prison as a result of that situation. And so Joseph's in prison and he's in prison and he's with these other prisoners and they have dreams and Joseph becomes known as someone who's an interpreter of dreams, Someone who can interpret dreams.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:And so this ends up releasing one of the prisoners and then Joseph said don't forget about me, you know, when you tell the leader that I interpreted this dream. And then ultimately Joseph is, two years later, Pharaoh gets wind of Joseph being able to interpret dreams. And so Pharaoh has a dream and he wants this interpreted. And so Joseph comes along and interprets this dream for Pharaoh. And when he does this, his sort of whole dynamic changes about halfway through our story, as it were, and Joseph becomes one in favor in Pharaoh's court and begins to rise in power and is in some sense released from his captivity to the Egyptians.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:And so he begins to rise in power, he's basically second in power in Egypt. And so then the story takes this interesting twist here where there's a famine in the land, there's a lot of struggle both in Egypt and in Canaan, and you have this situation that's very desperate and Joseph becomes one of the lead officials in figuring out how to get the nation of Egypt through this very serious situation of famine. And he encounters some Hebrews who come down from Canaan to buy grain. They've gotten word that there's grain for sale in Egypt, and sure enough, Hebrews are his brothers, the very ones who sold him into slavery in Egypt. And so these brothers come down, they don't recognize Joseph at first, and so he's in this situation where there's this like tense irony taking place.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:Of course, the reader knows. The reader's fully aware of the situation. It's like this great ironic motif that you see playing out in this text. The reader knows that these are brothers. The brothers don't know that they're talking and being tested by Joseph.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:And so Joseph tests them over a series of two or three times over these next chapters. Joseph is testing them to see who they really are and to reveal what their family dynamic really is and to ultimately to try to get them to divulge and bring out that which they did in the past. And so they do this and of course this whole situation sort of crescendos in chapter 45. And I think 45 is in many ways the pinnacle like the apex of this entire narrative which is why I have it on the back of your sheet. This is when Joseph finally decides to reveal himself to his brothers in a very emotional scene and he reveals himself to them and you see this huge act of reconciliation and forgiveness take place in 45.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:And then the subsequent chapters of this narrative from 46 through 50 are really about bringing the rest of the family together, bringing Jacob back down to Egypt, having Jacob bless his sons and this kind of family unity and reconciliation that occurs over the course of a few chapters. And then in chapter 49 you see Jacob's death. Of course, in some sense the Jacob narrative is extremely long as well even though he kind of comes and goes throughout the chapters, the Jacob narrative officially ends in 49 and then ultimately you see Joseph's death in '50, okay, and that kind of wraps up our entire episode, the entire story of Joseph, but also wraps up the patriarchal narrative. The era of the patriarchs is now over in chapter 50. And so you have this very poignant story of, and a lot of people point to this as being sort of the significant takeaway, and I think it is in many ways, of the story of Joseph is that it emphasizes God's providence.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:Okay, the providence of God, the God ordering affairs, God having affairs under his control and order all along even though we as humans don't always see how this is going to play out. And so this is a beautiful story of God's providence. This reminds me of there's some stories, I mean all of scripture is, God's providence is emphasized throughout all of scripture, sometimes you see it very clearly, right? You see it in the story of Moses being rescued in the water, in the reeds by Pharaoh's daughter. Ultimately Moses would be the one to deliver the Israelites out of Egypt.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:You see the story of Esther is a great story of God's providence where you see this organization of events around Esther's life, Queen Esther during a period of exile for Israel. And there's several stories like that. And so I sort of was thinking, you know, the Joseph story is very familiar to all of us. We've read it on different levels as adults, as we sort of walk through the text ourselves, we read it to our kids. It's one the more popular stories you read in Sunday school to your kids or at home with the Jesus Storybook Bible or something along those lines.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:And so I just sort of was thinking through, you know, kind of what what could I sort of say about this story that hasn't already been said in many ways, you know, many times. And one thing I wanted to highlight is that as we know, Joseph himself throughout this episode in many ways and people have seen this for centuries, Joseph himself is a sort of type of Christ, right? He is a type of Christ figure through this episode. He is someone who, you know, he says the sun and the moon and the stars are going to bow down to him. Ultimately, Jesus, everything would bow down to Jesus.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:Joseph was betrayed or sold for pieces of silver. So was Jesus. Joseph left his father and went to another country, so did Jesus. Joseph was the innocent one who was betrayed by his brothers, so was Jesus. And ultimately Joseph forgave his brothers, and so did Jesus.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:And so there's just a lot of similarities or typology there that people have recognized over the centuries, which is certainly significant and makes Joseph one of the sort of obvious types of Christ in the Old Testament. But as I got to thinking about the story, kind of like as we look at the story itself, these 14 chapters, As I sort of process this story, I kind of see it as sort of and I wrote this on your outline there. Joseph's early life and then Joseph's later life. Kind of broke it down into these two kind of categories as it were. And Joseph's early life to me is a life that's really marked by incarceration and imprisonment.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:If you think about the episodes, chapter 37, 38, 39, you kinda go through those early episodes, his his life is really defined in many ways by his captivity and imprisonment and incarceration throughout that time. And his later life, in many ways, is marked by freedom. Okay? Freedom from that captivity, that incarceration and so forth. And so I wanted to sort of just sit with this for a minute and talk about this idea of incarceration or imprisonment.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:It sort of struck me as I was thinking about this. There's a few things, you know, sort of feel like we don't talk enough about in general and in relation to the Bible. And one thing is this idea of imprisonment, incarceration or bondage that occurs throughout the scriptures. We see this as an ongoing motif throughout the Bible, this idea of imprisonment. Joseph's life is very much marked by his early life.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:Okay? Who else do we see as being someone who's been imprisoned in the scriptures? Daniel. Daniel in the lion's den, right? Paul?
Dr. Stephen Bagby:Yeah. It jumps to the New Testament. John the Baptist, someone said? Yeah. John the Baptist.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:Yeah. That's a great point. Yeah. That's yeah. Which is where we're going next with the book of Exodus.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:Right? Yeah. There's one more I'm thinking of. This is the hard one. Peter?
Dr. Stephen Bagby:Peter was. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:I'm getting him out of order here. Let's see. How about Jesus? Yeah. Well, that one too.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Jeremiah.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:Who said that? Good. Thank you. Yeah. Jeremiah.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:You get extra points today. Okay. That's a hard one. That was a hard one. Jeremiah.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:Yeah. And so we see this as a continued sort of motif throughout the scriptures. You have the Israelites obviously in bondage after Joseph's life. You have Daniel thrown in the lion's den. Jeremiah in Jeremiah 32 he's thrown into a prison for prophesying against Israelites.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:He foretold the fall of Jerusalem, they'd be taken into captivity, people saw that as treasonous, threw him into prison and then a few chapters later he was released and then thrown into a cistern, a muddy cistern. So twice Jeremiah was imprisoned. Peter, Paul, Jesus, John, a lot of these examples. What's interesting to me about these examples is that they are, what, to a person, right? Innocent people, right?
Dr. Stephen Bagby:Who were thrown into prison in captivity. And one of the things I got to thinking about was sort of like what did their captivity look like? What did their imprisonment look like? What kind of life and how did they view God during this time of captivity and imprisonment? And what I see in Joseph's life and the life of others is extreme faithfulness during this time and extreme understanding that when the world has abandoned you, God will not abandon you.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:There's an overriding theme here, motif throughout the scriptures. It seems like the entire world has abandoned these individuals who are in captivity, in prison, but God has not abandoned them. And you see this work out in the stories themselves. Course Paul himself wrote some of his greatest work in prison, right? These prison epistles, these four letters he wrote during his time in prison.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:Obviously Jeremiah kept prophesying. Ultimately Jesus died for our sins so we have these incredible examples and so I want to see sort of Joseph's life. What did Joseph do in prison? One of the interesting things about Joseph's narrative is that he's sort of dialoguing with people throughout the narrative and also giving theology at the same time. He's giving you sort of a theological exposition along the way.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:One thing he says here in Genesis 39, it says the Lord was with Joseph. He always emphasizes, Joseph does himself even, that the Lord is with him, that God is orchestrating these events. These aren't just sort of happening to him and he's some sort of like unidentified sort of pawn in this whole story but he's actually integral to see this story as playing out as part of God's providence. Joseph was put in charge in fact of all the other prisoners during his time in prison. And so that to me is sort of like an interesting reflection and also as a church historian, I can't help but think some of the great figures throughout church history have been imprisoned in various ways and there's too many to count right now, but my mind immediately goes to the second century Bishop of Antioch, Ignatius.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:If you know about Ignatius of Antioch, early second century he was persecuted for his faith. By the way there were like five major centers of early Christianity in the ancient Greco Roman world. Antioch was one of those five. So the idea is if you take the bishop and persecute the bishops, then the idea is that the sheep would scatter. And so Antioch was crucially important and Ignatius left us a series of letters that he wrote to others during his imprisonment, during his, while he was in chains And those letters are fascinating.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:We still have them, you could read them, the letters of Ignatius. And there's so many great things that he says about his understanding of the Christian faith, but one thing I just keep thinking about when I think of Ignatius is that it was during his time of being in chains and going to his death that he says, Now I am beginning to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. So for him it was discipleship was understood within the context of persecution which Paul told us would happen, right, in the New Testament. And so it just sort of like very humbling as I think about my Christian life thinking could I ever utter those words that Ignatius uttered. Just now am I beginning to be a disciple of Jesus Christ as I go to my death.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:Boethius, do you know that name from the sixth century? Boethius was an individual who is in a post Roman context after the Roman Empire has been taken over by foreign invaders. Boethius was accused of treason, that he was trying to overthrow the government to reestablish Roman order. And Boethius was thrown in prison even though he didn't do anything wrong. And he wrote his arguably one of the most famous pieces of prison literature ever written, The Consolation of Philosophy, which is not necessarily a distinctly Christian work, but if you read between the lines you can see his Christian faith coming out in this work.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:And then of course, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. We all know Bonhoeffer's story, right? He was kind of caught up or at least accused of being caught up in this this plot to kill Hitler and of course he writes his letters from prison during this time. So some of the greatest literature in the Christian tradition comes out of context in which people are finding themselves facing intense persecution, even impending death. And so it's sort of something for us to sort of, in my mind, sit with and think about, in some sense it's real easy to be a Christian in our soft, comfortable environments, our day to day lives.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:But is our formation occurring at the level of our everyday lives to where we could be a faithful figure like Joseph, like Paul, like Ignatius and others should we face that persecution? Because it very well may come. And so I want us to sort of reflect on that and think about how our Christian lives are being formed or not formed in certain ways that would sort of prepare ourselves and our souls for such an encounter. And so we have here sort of Joseph's early life. And the second part I have on your outline there, or the third point I guess, is Joseph's later life.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:And I'm fully aware that by later life I don't mean like advanced age and kind of like his older years necessarily, but more of like the second half of the narrative as it were. I know he's sort of in his early thirties in this narrative in many ways, but he is released from this captivity by the Egyptians. And one thing that I am sort of struck by is this notion of freedom. Know, we talk a lot about freedom in our country. We talk a lot about it just in everyday life.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:But I feel like it's one of those words that doesn't really get defined very often, you know. We kind of throw this word around, freedom, freedom, freedom, freedom, especially in a political context and everything and I think we often have, what I've seen is a lot of people have a very superficial understanding of that word and how to define it and how to understand it. I think when most people in this country think about freedom is they think, when they think of freedom, think freedom from. Freedom from tyranny, freedom from oppression, freedom from some sort of oppressing force or something. And of course, the American story is bound up in this, right?
Dr. Stephen Bagby:Being released from that freedom of oppression, British tyranny and so forth. So it's part of the narrative that sort of like swirls in our heads all the time and then of course we often impose that narrative onto the text of scripture or that definition of freedom onto the text of scripture. And I'm not saying that definition of freedom is wrong. I just think it's incomplete. And this is something Ozgem has taught me in one of his works, you know.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:Think it's we need to be thinking of freedom as a two sided coin. Okay? Oftentimes we see it in a one dimensional way. It's a two sided coin. It's not just freedom from, it's freedom to.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:Okay? Any notion of freedom has to have both in play. Yes, we are freed from, when we are freed, we're freed from oppression, from tyranny, whatever that may be. It could be political tyranny, it could be the tyranny of sin and bondage to addiction or certain habits, whatever that may be. But we're not just free to sort of go loose and spin and be aimless.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:And I think this is something we need to think about as a country too, but that's another story. When we think of freedom, we need to be thinking freedom to what? To pursue virtue. To pursue a noble goal. To pursue something constructive, something definite.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:And I think that goes missing a lot. And what I see in this Joseph narrative is that Joseph did that very thing. Joseph has this two sided notion of freedom. Yes, he's freed from oppression in Egypt, but he's also freed in order to do good works, in order to pursue virtue and justice and these kinds of things. And I think any healthy understanding of freedom has to have both of those in play for us to understand it.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:So let's look at Genesis 45, which I think is really the crescendo of this entire story. Genesis 45, on the back of your sheet there, the first 15 chapters, it says this, then Joseph could no longer control himself before all those who stood by him. Course, this has been building up for a couple of chapters by now, long time, several months or years even. And he cried out, send everyone away from me. So no one stayed with him when Joseph made himself known to his brothers and he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard it and the household of Pharaoh heard it.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:Joseph said to his brothers, I am Joseph. Is my father still alive? But his brothers could not answer him, so dismayed were they at his presence. Then Joseph said to his brothers, Come closer to me. And they came closer.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:And he said, I am your brother Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here. Look at that grace. Right? For God sent me before you to preserve life.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:Underline that part. For the famine has been in the land these two years and there are five more years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God. See, Joseph knows the God's providence.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:And he has made me a father to Pharaoh and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt. Hurry and go up to my father and say to him, thus says your son, Joseph, God made me lord of all Egypt. Come down to me, do not delay. You shall settle in the land of Goshen. You shall be near me and you and your children and your children's children as well as your flocks, your herds and all that you have, I will provide for you there.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:Since there are five more years of famine to come, so you and your household and all that you have will not come to poverty. Now your eyes and the eyes of my brother Benjamin see that it is my own mouth that speaks to you. You must tell my father how greatly I am honored in Egypt and all that you have seen. Hurry and bring my father down here. Then he fell upon his brother Benjamin's neck and wept.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:While Benjamin wept upon his neck and he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them. And after that his brothers talked with him. Okay, so I think it's pretty clear there that Joseph sees himself as someone who is an instrument in God's plan in order to provide for his brothers and his nation. And this is interesting to me because it's about giving life. It's a life giving activity that he is centrally involved in here.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:And I can't help but think about like two or three weeks ago I went down to Waco to hear Rowan Williams speak and the main gist of his talk was really that our God is a life giving God. It's a beautiful sort of lecture he gave on how God is a life giving God, and I've been thinking about that a lot lately. And Here We Are is this example of how Joseph is being used as a source of life giving for his brothers, and not just giving of life, but also this is going to be for the perpetuation of the family and of the nation that is going to ultimately inhabit Canaan and going to fulfill the promises that God has laid out in Genesis twelve fifteen, 17 and beyond. Right? So this is all part of the story that is critical.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:And one thing that I also think about in this story as I sort of reflect on it is, if you kind of stay with me here, like this idea that Joseph expresses a lot of emotion in this text. I don't know if you've noticed in your reading of this text over the years just how much emotion he expresses. You look at starting in Genesis 42, 4two 24, 4three 30, 4five thirteen and fourteen, which we just read, 4six 29. You see here, in four different chapters, the narrator is highlighting Joseph's emotions. And that's another thing I think we don't talk about enough.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:We have this modern Western stoic understanding of things often, and we don't really sit with emotion as articulated and as a way of expressing freedom too. This idea that he is freed also to express emotion, to sort of allow for that release and that that expression of love through emotion. And I think that can be hard for us, myself included, to think about the role of emotion in scripture. And I think one of the things I used to tell my fellows last year all the time was sort of don't skip over the emotional parts of scripture. You might be tempted to because of your personality or family history or dynamics, those kinds of things.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:It might be easy to go, oh, that's when they just got really emotional. Sit with it. Sit with the emotion in scripture because it's there all the time in scripture. There are so many examples of emotional experiences being expressed in the scriptures. I think of David dancing when the ark was returned in two Samuel.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:I mean he danced. He's the king, you know, he's dancing. We think of course the Psalms, the emotional kind of different levels of emotion. Did you know that the word Psalms in Hebrew means praises? And that may not surprise you, but what may surprise you is the largest section of the Psalms are Psalms of Lament.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:And so your largest section of the psalter is psalms of lament even though the psalms is defined as praises. So we have to sit with this idea that obviously, and we are in a tradition I think that can understand lament and does have a place for it, but we also have to sit with this idea that that we need to allow our emotions to work themselves out. I see so I say this so much because I just feel like there's a lot of pressure in our society to sort of get past things quickly and move on and just sort of almost act as if it didn't happen or it only has a short period of time. In ancient societies, people mourned for loved ones for long periods of time, weeks or even months, the loss of loved ones, okay? And there was official mourning periods, okay?
Dr. Stephen Bagby:So I think that we would stand a benefit if we allowed ourselves to enter those spaces more regularly or more intentionally as we think about this because I think the scripture invites us to enter those spaces and to be people who are not just sort of putting on a stoic face but living in these emotional spaces. You know, I see also just a lot of interesting similarities. I got to thinking about this. A lot of interesting similarities between Joseph and Jeremiah. I don't know if you've studied kind of those two figures.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:Jeremiah the prophet, of course, one of the major prophets. Both are very emotional figures, by the way. Jeremiah is known as the weeping prophet. Right? He wrote the book of Lamentations.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:You see both interacting at the highest levels of government. Joseph is interacting with Pharaoh in Egypt. Jeremiah is interacting with King Zedekiah, okay, of Israel. You see both their lives on the cusp of exile. Okay?
Dr. Stephen Bagby:So Joseph is on the cusp, he doesn't know it, I think, but he's on the cusp of his people going into exile in Egypt. Jeremiah is on the cusp of his people going into exile into Babylon. And in both of those contexts, Jeremiah and Joseph, you see this strong covenantal language in those texts too. There's a reiteration of the covenant here in the Joseph narrative. The covenant that we've seen over and over in the book of Genesis starting with God meeting with Abraham, but we've seen this reiteration of the covenant happen and of course with Jeremiah you see the introduction of the new covenant, the promised new covenant that will come about, right?
Dr. Stephen Bagby:And so a lot of interesting parallels that I've noticed in those narratives. So I feel like in this Joseph narrative we have a very intentional freedom to that Joseph is very much aligned with providing for his brothers and his family. And so that kind of like is sort of my takeaway from this text. And I'll wrap up here real quickly here in the next two or three minutes here, if you'll bear with me. And I wanted to sort of just recap Genesis real fast here.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:We see the creation, we see the spread of nations, and then we get to the narrative of 12 and beyond in which we see the promise of what? Land, seed, and blessing. Right? And as I've said over and over again, I feel like it's there's this idea that God has promised these things to Abraham and his offspring and yet it looks like from human perspective that this is not going to get fulfilled. This is not going to happen.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:Like how in the world with the land, look at, think about the land. Think about the people who inhabited the land or who were promised the land. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph. What did they spend their whole life doing? Sojourning.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:They just spent their whole life sojourning. Just traveling, you're like, are they actually going to land in the land? Are they actually going to be in the land? And so the narrative just takes you all over the place, Egypt, Haran, Shechem, all these different places and you're like, are they going to be in the land? Seed, what do we think about with seed?
Dr. Stephen Bagby:Sarai. Yes, Sarah, right? She's barren. Who else? Rebecca.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:She's barren. Who else? Rachel. Rachel. She's barren, right?
Dr. Stephen Bagby:And so you're just constantly encountered by this like, is the seed gonna get fulfilled? Is that going to happen? And from a reader standpoint, a first time reader is often say like, you could read it and go, well, how is this going to turn out? Is this going to be fulfilled? Okay?
Dr. Stephen Bagby:And so despite, you know, the land despite sojournings, the sea despite challenges, and then blessing. Think about blessing. Were these patriarchs a blessing to their neighbors and the nations? Remember the stories? Going down to Abimelech, going to Egypt, and they say, oh, no, she's not my wife, she's my sister, and she all these things, and you're caught and they're running into trouble everywhere they go, and you're like, are they going to be a blessing to the nations?
Dr. Stephen Bagby:And despite all that, you have this intra family conflict that's happening. Right? You just have an enormous amount of intra family conflict between brothers and all these things, and, like, it's almost like they can't get out of their own way sometimes. You know? And so you're just constantly reading this going, okay.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:God has promised it. I don't see it always, but God has promised it. And so God is a God who sticks to his promises. He is going to see this through even if we can't always see this in the book of Genesis. And so where we're going is that we're going to move after this into the book of Exodus and God is going to reveal himself, the God of the patriarchs will reveal himself to Moses and Moses will lead the people and be given the law, lead the people out of oppression in Egypt, and he will give them the law as we see in the book of Exodus and Leviticus.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:They will travel to the promised land. He will take them to the cusp of the promised land, the book of Deuteronomy. Moses will die, they will enter the promised land with Joshua and those books as we see going forward and, we will see the beginnings of the fulfillment that was promised, to the patriarchs, at that time. So, that concludes our study of Genesis. Thank you, you've been a great class.
Dr. Stephen Bagby:I sort of always walk away from periods of time or classes or whatever in Bible and church history just sort of thinking, you know, I'm not the final word on interpretation of Genesis, so you know, take the good, leave behind the bad, you know, whatever. But I'm just sort of trying to introduce us to a lot of these central concepts in Genesis and there's a lot of great resources on the book of Genesis. If you want to go further, we can talk about that and I can recommend some books as far as I know, the ones I'll recommend and yeah, we'll see you next semester. Thank you so much. Yeah.