A complete, verse-by-verse walk through the book of beginnings — creation, covenant, and the seed of promise — taught by Dr. Toby B. Holt.
The book of beginnings — creation, the fall, the flood, and the patriarchs. One unbroken thread: God’s covenant grace advancing toward Christ.
Last updated: June 2026
Historically and biblically, the book of Genesis was authored by Moses, compiled during the wilderness wanderings (c. 1440 B.C.). Moses wrote under the direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit; his purpose was to remind a newly founded nation of their origins, the absolute sovereignty of their God, and the covenant promises made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
Creation & the fall — a holy God, a good world, and sin’s entrance that sets redemption in motion.
The covenant of grace — the first promise of the gospel in Genesis 3:15, carried through the patriarchs.
The seed of promise — the line through which the Redeemer would come, preserved against every threat.
The sovereignty of God — over nations, families, and even human evil (“you meant it for evil…”).
In The Beginning (Creation) God spoke — and everything that exists came to be. Listen & Read → 2 
The Temptation And The Fall Eve believed the serpent. Every human problem began there. Listen & Read → 3 
A Murder East Of Eden The first children outside Eden — one killed the other. Listen & Read → 4 
Noah And The Great Flood God judged the world with a flood and saved one family. Listen & Read → 5 
The Tower Of Babel Humanity built a tower to heaven. God came down. Listen & Read → 6 
Abraham, The Friend Of God God made Abraham impossible promises — and Abraham believed them. Listen & Read → 7 
Abraham, Sarah, And God's Big Promise God promised a son. Sarah laughed. She should not have. Listen & Read → 8 
The Destruction Of Sodom And Gomorrah God rained fire on Sodom. His holiness is not debatable. Listen & Read → 9 
A Father's Sacrifice Of A Son God told Abraham to sacrifice Isaac — Abraham obeyed. Listen & Read → 10 
The Patriarchs And Predestination Of Israel Before Jacob and Esau were born, God chose the younger. Listen & Read → 11 
The Blessing And The Betrayal Jacob stole Esau's blessing. God's covenant still moved forward. Listen & Read → 12 
Jacob's Ladder — What Was It? Jacob dreamed of a ladder reaching from earth to heaven. Listen & Read → 13 
Wrestling With God Jacob wrestled God — and left with a limp. Listen & Read → 14 
Joseph And The Coat Of Many Colors Joseph's brothers sold him into slavery — God had a plan. Listen & Read → 15 
Dreams In The Darkness Joseph interpreted dreams in prison. Then Pharaoh had one. Listen & Read → 16 
God's Providence In Evil's Path You meant it for evil. God meant it for good. Listen & Read → 17 
The Final Words Of The First Book Jacob's last words point to a people, a promise, a King. Listen & Read → These are the passages that anchor the theology of Genesis — the texts Reformed theologians have returned to for centuries as the foundation of Christian doctrine.
"In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."
"So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them."
"And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel."
"Now the LORD had said to Abram: 'Get out of your country, from your family and from your father's house, to a land that I will show you. I will make you a great nation; I will bless you and make your name great; and you shall be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.'"
"And he believed in the LORD, and He accounted it to him for righteousness."
"But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive."
Genesis is not merely the history of origins — it is the beginning of the story of redemption. Jesus declared on the road to Emmaus that Moses wrote about him (Luke 24:27; John 5:46). Reformed biblical theology reads Genesis typologically: real historical events that simultaneously point forward to Christ. The connections are not allegorical inventions — they are woven into the text by the divine Author who ordained both the type and its fulfillment.
The Protoevangelium (Genesis 3:15) — The First Promise of Christ: The earliest messianic prophecy in Scripture. God declares that the Seed of the woman will crush the serpent's head, suffering a wound in the process. This is the first announcement of the incarnation, the cross, and the resurrection — spoken in the shadow of the fall itself. Every subsequent messianic promise traces its root here.
Noah's Ark (Genesis 6–9) — A Type of Salvation in Christ: Peter explicitly identifies the ark as a type of baptism and of salvation in Christ (1 Peter 3:20–21). As Noah and his family passed through judgment safely within the ark while the world outside perished, so believers are sheltered from divine wrath within Christ. The ark did not make Noah righteous — it preserved the one whom God declared righteous by faith. The parallel is exact.
The Sacrifice of Isaac (Genesis 22) — The Clearest Type of the Atonement: God commands Abraham to sacrifice his only son — the son of promise, the son he loved — on Mount Moriah. At the last moment, God provides a substitute: a ram caught in a thicket, offered in Isaac's place. The location is significant: Mount Moriah is the same mountain range where Jerusalem stands, where the Temple would be built, and where Jesus would be crucified. Abraham named the place "The LORD Will Provide" (Genesis 22:14). The ram was the type; Christ is the substance. As Abraham raised the knife, he believed God could raise Isaac from the dead (Hebrews 11:19). God did not spare Abraham's son on that day — but he did not spare his own Son either (Romans 8:32).
Joseph (Genesis 37–50) — A Type of Christ Rejected and Exalted: Joseph is the most detailed type of Christ in Genesis. He was the beloved son of his father, rejected by his own brothers, sold for silver, falsely condemned, and cast into a pit — yet raised to the highest throne in Egypt, where he became the savior of the very brothers who betrayed him. He forgave them fully and provided for them lavishly. The parallels to Christ are not accidental: the beloved Son, betrayed for silver, condemned unjustly, exalted to the right hand of power, the savior of those who rejected him. Joseph's declaration — "you meant it for evil, but God meant it for good" (Genesis 50:20) — is the theology of the cross in seed form.
This is New Geneva's distinctive contribution to Genesis scholarship: not merely noting these types in passing, but preaching them verse-by-verse with the full weight of Westminster-confessional theology behind them. Dr. Toby Holt's expository series through Genesis does precisely this — tracing the scarlet thread of redemption from the garden to Egypt, showing how every major narrative points to the one of whom Moses wrote.
These shadows and promises find their fullness in the Gospel of John, where the eternal Word who was with God in the beginning (John 1:1) took on flesh to accomplish the redemption that Genesis first promised.
Genesis is the Bible's book of beginnings — the origin of the universe, humanity, sin, covenant, and the promise of redemption. In fifty chapters it moves from creation and the fall (chapters 1–11) to the patriarchal narratives of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph (chapters 12–50). The unifying thread throughout is God's sovereign grace advancing his covenant promise despite human rebellion at every turn. That promise, first announced in Genesis 3:15 and formalized with Abraham in Genesis 12:1–3, finds its fulfillment in Jesus Christ. Genesis does not merely introduce the Bible — it is the lens through which all of Scripture must be read.
Moses is the author of Genesis, writing under divine inspiration approximately 1440 B.C. — the consistent testimony of both Old and New Testaments. Jesus himself attributes the Pentateuch to Moses in John 5:46: "For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me" (NKJV). Modern documentary theories (the JEDP hypothesis) that fragment Genesis among multiple anonymous authors are incompatible with the testimony of Christ and the apostles. Genesis served as a theological anchor for the young nation, grounding their identity in divine decree rather than human merit.
The Protoevangelium is the first gospel promise in Scripture — God's declaration to the serpent that the Seed of the woman would crush his head. Found in Genesis 3:15, immediately after the fall, this verse is the seed from which all subsequent messianic prophecy grows. The "Seed of the woman" is Christ, born of a virgin, who crushed Satan's power through his death and resurrection. Every covenant promise from Abraham to David to the new covenant is an unfolding of what God first announced here.
Genesis 1:1 establishes creation ex nihilo — God created the universe out of nothing by the power of his word alone, not from pre-existing matter. The Hebrew verb bara is used exclusively of divine action throughout the Old Testament, never of human making. This distinguishes the God of Scripture from every ancient Near Eastern cosmology, which depicted gods fashioning the world from pre-existing chaos or conflict. Creation ex nihilo is the foundation of human dignity, moral accountability, and the doctrine of providence.
The covenant of works is God's arrangement with Adam in Genesis 2:15–17 — life for obedience, death for disobedience. As federal head and representative of all humanity, Adam's failure brought guilt and spiritual death to all who descend from him by ordinary generation (Romans 5:12). Christ, the second Adam (Romans 5:19), succeeded where the first failed — his perfect active obedience to the law of God is the positive ground of justification for all who are united to him by faith.
The Reformed tradition reads Genesis 3 as a literal, historical event with universal consequences — not myth, allegory, or evolutionary narrative. Adam's disobedience ruptured the covenant of works and introduced guilt, total depravity, and spiritual death to all humanity. As Paul argues in Romans 5:12–19, the logic of the atonement depends entirely on the historical reality of Adam's fall: one man's disobedience brought condemnation; one man's obedience brings justification. Strip the historical fall and the need for a historical redeemer collapses with it.
The Tower of Babel (Genesis 11:1–9) is humanity's post-flood attempt to centralize in defiance of God's command to fill the earth — the culmination of Genesis 1–11's portrait of progressive rebellion. God's response — confusing their language and scattering them — is the biblical explanation for the diversity of human languages and peoples. Theologically, Babel sets the stage for the Abrahamic covenant: God's call of Abraham in Genesis 12 is his redemptive answer to the scattering of nations. Pentecost (Acts 2), where the Spirit enabled every tongue to hear the gospel, is the ultimate reversal of Babel's division.
Genesis contains the seed of every major biblical covenant. The covenant of works is established with Adam in Genesis 2:15–17. The covenant of grace is inaugurated in Genesis 3:15 with the promise of a Redeemer. The Noahic covenant (Genesis 9:8–17) is God's common grace commitment to preserve creation — its sign is the rainbow. The Abrahamic covenant (Genesis 12:1–3; 15; 17) is the central covenant of the book: God's unconditional promise of a people, a land, and universal blessing through Abraham's Seed. Reformed covenant theology understands all these as administrations of the one covenant of grace, with Christ as their substance.
Genesis is the beginning of the single story Scripture tells from creation to new creation — and every major biblical theme has its root here. Image of God, covenant, sacrifice, promise, providence, redemption: all introduced in the first fifty chapters. The patriarchal narratives are not a collection of moral biographies; they are the unfolding of God's sovereign covenant purpose toward its climax in Christ. Jesus told his disciples on the Emmaus road: "And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself" (Luke 24:27, NKJV). That exposition began in Genesis 3:15.
Yes. Dr. Holt teaches verse-by-verse in clear, plain English that new believers can follow, while remaining rich enough for pastors and teachers — ideal for personal devotions, family worship, and small-group study.
Every sermon is free to stream and download here, and on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and SermonAudio. Each one includes a full written transcript you can read along with.
Genesis grounds many of the doctrines confessed in the Westminster Standards. Its opening chapters establish creation (WCF 4) and God’s works of providence (WCF 5); the covenant of works and the first promise of the covenant of grace are rooted here (WCF 7), as is the fall of man and the entrance of sin into the world (WCF 6). To read Genesis alongside the Confession is to watch Reformed theology emerge directly from the text of Scripture.
Genesis
by John Calvin
Genesis: An Expositional Commentary
by James Montgomery Boice
Genesis (Tyndale Old Testament Commentary)
by Derek Kidner
Creation and Change
by Douglas F. Kelly
New Geneva Theological Seminary has equipped ministers and lay leaders in Westminster-confessional theology since 1993. Our expository preaching series through the Bible — including this complete study of Genesis — reflects the same theological commitments that shape our degree programs: Scripture is the Word of God, the Westminster Standards are a faithful summary of its teaching, and sound doctrine must produce pastoral practice.
Whether you are pursuing ordination in the PCA, OPC, RCUS, or other denominations — or simply want to go deeper in God's Word — New Geneva offers fully online, affordable, Reformed theological education that works around your life and calling. Degrees include the M.Div., Th.M., MACM, and D.Min., all at $300 per credit hour.
