Old Testament Survey

In the Beginning: Creation, Fall, and a Promise (Genesis 1-11)

On the first Easter afternoon, two heartbroken disciples walked the road to Emmaus, and the risen Jesus fell in step beside them. They did not recognize him, so he gave them something better than a reveal: a Bible study. "Beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself" (Luke 24:27). Notice what Jesus reached for to explain Jesus: the Old Testament. Not as background reading, not as the religion he had outgrown, but as the Scriptures that had been speaking of him all along. That conviction governs this whole course. The Old Testament is Christian Scripture, thirty-nine books written across roughly a thousand years, telling one historically real story, and every era of it leans forward.

²⁵He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! ²⁶ Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” ²⁷And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.Luke 24:25-27 · NIV

This course walks that story era by era, holding two threads in hand the entire way. The first is the covenant thread: the binding promises God makes and keeps, from Eden through Noah, Abraham, Sinai, and David, to the new covenant the prophets announce. The second is Christ in the Old Testament: learning to see, by the Bible's own method rather than by forcing, how the whole account anticipates him. Where The Story of Scripture gave you the whole Bible at altitude, this course slows down over its first three quarters, the same way New Testament Survey slows down over the last.

The shape of the Old Testament

Get the map in hand before the journey. The Old Testament's thirty-nine books come in four kinds. The Law (Genesis through Deuteronomy) gives the foundation story and the covenant. The History (Joshua through Esther) shows the covenant lived out, and mostly broken, in the land. The Wisdom and Songs (Job through Song of Songs) are the covenant prayed and pondered. The Prophets (Isaiah through Malachi) are the covenant enforced and the future promised. Those groupings are arranged by kind, not by timeline, which is why reading straight through can feel like the story keeps restarting. One arc runs underneath all four shelves, and this course walks the arc. Eight sessions from now you will finish with a map, not a pile: pick up any Old Testament book and you will know where it sits in the story and why it was written.

Very good

²⁶Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” ²⁷So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. ²⁸God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”Genesis 1:26-28 · NIV

Genesis 1 and 2 read as they present themselves: the one true God speaking a real creation into being. Every neighboring culture had an origin story, and in all of them the world is born from combat, gods fighting gods, humanity created as an afterthought to do the chores. Genesis stands alone and unbothered: no rivals, no struggle, just "God said," and it was so, and it was good. The crown of the work is a pair of creatures made in his own image, male and female, blessed and commissioned to fill the earth and rule it under him. That opening chapter is load-bearing for everything you believe about human beings. Dignity that no economy can price, work and marriage given as gifts before sin ever entered, a day of rest built into the rhythm of the world: all of it is anchored in a creation God himself pronounced very good.

The rupture

Then comes Genesis 3, and it must be read as sober history, not illustration: a real temptation, a real choice, a real curse. Watch the anatomy of the first sin, because it is the anatomy of every sin since: doubt God's word ("Did God really say?"), grasp at what he withheld, hide from him, and blame someone else. The chapters that follow trace sin's spread with terrible speed, a brother murdered in chapter 4, the earth filled with violence by chapter 6, a tower built in chapter 11 by people determined to make a name for themselves. The Fall is the Bible's explanation of why the world is the way it is, and the New Testament treats it as fact: Paul's whole argument in Romans 5 hangs on a real Adam whose one trespass brought death, answered by a real Christ whose one act of righteousness brings life. Deny the rupture and nothing after it makes sense, including the cross.

Grace moves first

⁸Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. ⁹But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” ¹⁰He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.” ¹¹And he said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?” ¹²The man said, “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” ¹³Then the Lord God said to the woman, “What is this you have done?” The woman said, “The serpent deceived me, and I ate.” ¹⁴So the Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, “Cursed are you above all livestock and all wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. ¹⁵And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”Genesis 3:8-15 · NIV

Now slow down over the detail most readers rush past. When Adam and Eve sin, who moves first? God does, walking in the garden, calling "Where are you?" to people he could justly have destroyed. And before he pronounces a single consequence on the man or the woman, he turns to the serpent and plants a promise inside the curse itself: the offspring of the woman will crush your head. Grace moves before judgment falls, on page three of the Bible. The pattern then repeats through these chapters: garments for the naked, a protecting mark for Cain, an ark through the flood, a rainbow hung over Noah with a covenant promise for the whole earth. Judgment is real in Genesis 1 to 11, and mercy outruns it every time. The flood narrows the story to one family; Babel scatters the proud; and the stage is set for God to answer the scattered nations with one childless old man in Ur.

Trace Genesis 3:15 forward and you are tracing the Bible's first gospel promise. An offspring of the woman, wounded in the striking, who crushes the serpent's head: God preaches the gospel in advance, in the darkest chapter of the book. Then Genesis itself follows the seed. Eve names Seth with hope, "God has granted me another child in place of Abel" (4:25). Chapter 5 walks the line down from Seth, name by name, to Noah. Chapter 11 walks it from Noah's son Shem, name by name, to Abram. The genealogies most readers skip are the promise being kept, generation by generation, until the New Testament can end the trace: born of a woman (Galatians 4:4), appearing "to destroy the devil's work" (1 John 3:8), and, in Paul's deliberate echo of Eden, "the God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet" (Romans 16:20). The Old Testament is this promise growing.

The first sin ran doubt God's word, grasp, hide, blame. Where have you seen that exact pattern in your own life this month? Write down one place, and then write what it changes to know that God announced the gospel before he announced the curse.

Go Deeper

Study question: Read Genesis 5 slowly, the genealogy most people skip. What repeated phrase tolls through the chapter, and how does verse 24 (Enoch) interrupt it? What is this chapter doing to carry the promise of 3:15 forward?