The Bible is not merely a book about God; it is also a book about man. If God and the Lord Jesus were taken away from the Bible, the Bible would become an empty book. In the same way, if man was removed from the Bible, the Bible would have no one to receive God’s speaking. Therefore, just as God and the Lord Jesus occupy a particular place in the Bible, man also occupies a particular place. The Bible reveals God and the Lord Jesus in order to show forth man. The essential object of God’s revealing of Himself is man; therefore, man occupies a very significant place in the Bible.
In the entire Bible, man probably takes up a greater number of pages than God and the Lord Jesus, because a greater part of the words written in the Bible deal with the things concerning man. The Bible plainly and clearly reveals the whole story of man in detail. If we really want to know man, there is no way other than to read the Bible carefully. This is because no other book in the entire world has ever described man’s condition as thoroughly as the Bible. Therefore, if we want to know the Bible, we also have to know the line of man in the Bible.
In the Bible there are different groups of people, and God speaks differently to each group. For instance, some words are spoken to the children of Israel, so we should not apply them to the believers. Some words are spoken to the church, so we should not apply them to the Jews. Every speaking has a particular group of people as its focus, and if we make a mistake in recognizing the object of a particular speaking, we will have a great problem in applying it. Therefore, when we read the Bible, we must pay attention to the line of man.
Genesis 1:1—8:19 concerns the adamic race, Adam and his descendants. To speak about the adamic race is to speak about the first group of people in the human race. In this period all human beings in the world were of the adamic race; there was no distinction among Israelites, Gentiles, or the church. Concerning the first group of people, there are five main points that require our attention.
We all need to read Genesis 2. Adam was created in God’s image with a spirit, a soul, and a body, prepared to receive God’s life and reign for God.
Adam fell not long after he was created.
According to the account in Genesis 3, as soon as Adam fell, he hid himself and was afraid to see God. Therefore, God came to seek and to save him. On the one hand, God promised that the seed of the woman would come to be his Savior; on the other hand, God made coats of skins for him; this was done in anticipation of redemption.
Beginning with Cain, the majority of the people in the adamic race rejected God’s way of salvation; they tried to make a living and invented a culture for themselves. As a result, they became wicked in the extreme and corrupt to the uttermost. As a consequence, they incurred God’s judgment.
God then submerged the whole earth with the flood; all the people were destroyed by the flood except for Noah’s family of eight. At this point the adamic race came to an end. This was the first group of people in the Bible.
The descendants of Noah are recorded in Genesis 8:20—11:9. Noah’s descendants are the second group of people in the Bible. Although God terminated the adamic race with the flood, He rescued Noah and his family of eight. God established Noah as a new father, and his three sons became the fathers of the three races of mankind.
Whereas Adam was the father established by God in His creation, Noah was the father established by God in His salvation. The father in God’s creation was completely destroyed and terminated due to the corruption of his descendants; therefore, God saved a man—Noah—to be the father of mankind on the earth who had been judged and destroyed. Concerning Noah’s descendants, there are four main points.
Noah’s three sons greatly multiplied, and soon their descendants spread over the whole earth.
Noah’s descendants separated into many nations on the earth. Beginning at this point in time, nations began to appear on the earth among men.
However, Noah’s descendants joined together and collectively rebelled against God; this is the story of Babel. Before Babel, people on the earth opposed God individually; they never reached the point of being organized together. At Babel, however, men organized themselves to form an alliance, and they all joined together to rebel against God. They wanted to build a tower whose top reached the heavens so that they might make a name for themselves and remove the name of God from the face of the earth.
Just as the adamic race was terminated due to God’s judgment, the line of Noah’s descendants was also terminated by God’s judgment. Whereas the previous judgment involved destruction by the flood, this judgment involved the confounding of their language so that they would not be able to form an alliance. They were scattered due to their inability to communicate with each other. At this point Noah’s descendants came to an end, and a third group of people became the focus of the Bible.