- Apr 16, 2025Chapter 6 Pt, 2
Chapter 6 Pt, 2
- Mar 12, 2025Chapter 3 Pt. 2
Chapter 3 Pt. 2
- Mar 5, 2025Chapter 3 Pt. 1
Chapter 3 Pt. 1
- Feb 26, 2025Chapter 2
Chapter 2
- Feb 19, 2025Chapter 1 Pt. 4
Chapter 1 Pt. 4Full Transcript:Alright. Good evening, everybody. The common theme tonight has been it's cold. Yes. It's cold, and it's gonna get colder. So I hope you bundled up. And, make sure you leave a little water dripping tonight. It's gonna be a hard freeze. So make sure you take care of those issues. And, looking forward to, you know, some good quality time tonight in the Lord. So, if you joined us online, thank you for being here. If you're here with us tonight, again, thank you for being here. We are on business meeting night, so we will be starting off our we'll start our live stream and then shut it off at 07:00. So we'll pick up with our business meeting then. So let's go ahead and open with a word of prayer, and then we'll get kicked off back into Genesis. We hopefully will be finishing chapter one tonight and maybe even, getting into chapter two just a little bit. But let's go ahead and go to the Lord in prayer. Father, we thank you so much for all the blessings that you give us this and every day. Father, the seasons change and as much as man tries to understand and predict weather and all of those things even the meteorologist will say to me only God knows for sure what's gonna happen because they don't know but you do and father that's how it is with everything in our life. We don't know from day to day what's really gonna happen, but you already know. God tonight as we go back into your word in the book of Genesis, and we're still in the first, six days of creation that we've been studying. Father, just reveal to us the things that we need to see, that we need to understand and to know and to to hold as truths that we might be wise in our walk in you. Father, we ask all these things in Jesus precious and holy name. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Alright. So as those of you that were here last week or joined online know, we got down through verse 26 and then we stopped. Don said, tonight, you should have went on and covered verse 27, because it's still talking about the creation of man. I said, no. I stopped there for a reason. And so we look back at verse 26 and we talk about the fact that God created man in his own image. Says he created in his image and likeness. And we talked about that last week of how it's in God's image, but it doesn't mean that we look just like him. It means that we're in his image. It's also in his likeness. So we have some similarities, some things that we could ascertain about God from people, but we don't look just like him and certainly we don't act like God. But he did create us, in his image. And he said, let us, meaning it was the Triune God. It was the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It was not, only one of the Trinity. All three were together in this creation. And so God created man and his image. And when he created us in that way, it's something that we can look back on and understand that we did not evolve from something else. That God created us. I wanna tell you, this is what a scientist said. It would take 40 different stages of evolution to form a human eye. What possible benefit could there be for the first thirty nine stages? Right? And said, Darwin himself said, if it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous successive slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. At at, Genesis at University of California, Berkeley listed a series of complex structures from the hair of mammals that he thought could not have been produced by thousands of years of small mutation. The Darwinists, the ones that were supposed to be following Darwin's, met this with absolute ridicule. So when they were met with proof that it couldn't happen, they just got mad and said he couldn't possibly be right. So when we look at all this, we understand that God created man. Now God created man. Not only did he create man, mankind in his image, but he created mankind as a full grown person. He didn't create Adam as an embryo. He didn't create Adam as a follicle. He didn't create Adam as just a tiny little baby. He created Adam as a full grown person. So god created him. He didn't evolve from something else. He was created as a full grown person. Now not only did god create man in his image, but verse 27 says, so god created man in his own image. In the image of god, he created him male and female. He created them. Then god bless them, and god said to them, be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth. So not only did god create man, mankind in his image, but he created them in their kind, male and female. So human as their kind, male and female, separate. Not the same. He didn't create males that became females or females that became males. He created male and female. Totally separate. There was not the same. He created them in their humankind of their own kind. He didn't create monkeys that became people. He didn't create, lizards that became people. He created male and female of their kind, male and female mankind. So for us to understand that and to hold on to that is something that we have to do very much because in this world we live in today, the world is trying to skewer that view and take away the biblical worldview and to cause you to believe that it couldn't possibly be true. That there's all these other things. So if he created them in that way, then we wouldn't find any evidence through fossils to the contrary. If they found evidence through fossils of some kind of creature that began to evolve into a whole different kind of creature, then that would be something that would say this couldn't be true. They have never found that. And according to what I read in scripture, they're never gonna because that's not how God did it. He created mankind on the sixth day, and he created them male and female. He created them separately. So, he told them to be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth. So all of these things that happened in as he created them, he blessed them. Now I want you to understand and see that the person, the human, is the only thing he created that he then turned around and blessed. He didn't bless the birds of the air. He didn't bless the fish of the sea. He didn't bless the the trees and the vegetation. He blessed the one that he created in his own image. He blessed man. That's the only one that he blessed. So is humankind better than animal kingdom? Yes. God created us to be over all of that. Is humankind blessed by God? Yeah. It says so right here. It's not animals kind that's blessed by God. It's humankind. God bless him. That's the first thing he did. He blessed him. So without his blessing, life wouldn't only be, unbearable. It'd probably be useless if he didn't bless it. Right? Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth. God gave man a job to do right off the bat. Okay. I created you now. Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth. God gave him a job. Man cannot fulfill god's plan for him unless he populates it. Right? That's what god's plan was. Be fruitful and populate the earth. That's what we're supposed to do. So then, you know, of course, you have the whole argument that people try to throw out. Well, that means that, the only reason people are supposed to have sex is because they're supposed to be populating the Earth. But that's not true. In fact, God gave mankind desire for sex that would help populate the Earth. But the very first part of the union of sex was to create the bonding of the one flesh relationship. That one flesh relationship. That was the very first thing. And so when we look at all of this and we understand, if you look at the animal kingdom, the animal kingdom does not have sexual intercourse for, bonding. It's strictly for mating for during the season that their body says they're supposed to do that. Human, people do not have a, what what they don't have a season of heat. Although sometimes I wonder. They they don't know. If they did, then we would know this is when we should be able to have babies. Right? But there's people spend a lot of money trying to figure out how we're gonna have a baby. You don't know. So the reality is God didn't make humankind only to populate the earth. There are other things. And he created that union between a man and a woman as a one flesh bond. And that's why it should be treated as something that is precious and special and god given and not just treated as an act to have someone have pleasure. It is an act that is holy before god. And so he created it that way. He said then, in all of this, not only will you go be fruitful and multiply and sub fill the earth and do it, but you have dominion over the fish and the birds and the air. And he said in verse 29, I have given every herb that yields seed, which is on the face of all the earth, and every tree whose fruit yields seed, to you it shall be for food. So all of the things that God did, all of the stuff that he showed us, everything that he created, he put man over all of it. And then he told us that all of the the herbs and the and the fruit and the things that came from those, all of those things should be for food for man. And so if it's for food for man, understand this. Apparently, before the flood, we were all vegetarians. Didn't say he gave the animals for food at that point. Right? He said he gave the herbs and he gave the plants. He gave the fruit. He gave all that for food. It's later after the flood when god says these are for you. That all these animals are for you. But he put us over the animals. He made us to work, the ground. He made us to do all of those things and to make, life to fill the earth. Not just in human form, but also in the plants, in the trees, in the animals, and all of those things. We were supposed to be fruitful and multiply in all areas, not just in humans, but in everything. And so those are the things that we needed to do. He says in verse 30, also to every beast of the earth, to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth in which there is life. I have given every green herb for food, and it was so. Then god saw everything that he had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day. It was very good. Everything that he had done was very good, and it was the evening and the morning of the sixth day. So those are the six days of creation. People go back sometimes and they say, well, you know, then it turns around in in chapter two and it goes back and it starts doing it again and starts putting it in in different ways or what? No. Here's the way to look at it. In Genesis chapter one, it talks about the six days of creation. In Genesis chapter two, it basically clarifies the things that happened on those days. It gives you more information. One commentator that I read said, it puts it more in Adam's perspective of what happened when you get into chapter two because it gives you more information about the things that occurred, like the fact of how Adam was created and then how Eve was created and those things. And they were taken away, that Eve was taken from the flesh and so of Adam and all of those things. So it gives us a little more detail. It doesn't change anything that happened in chapter one. It gives us a little more detail. But the one of the most important things I want us to see in the first part of chapter two is this. Thus, the heavens and the earth and the host of them were finished. And on the seventh day, god ended his work, which he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work, which we he had done. Then god blessed the seventh day and sanctified it because in it, he rested from all his work, which god had created and made. So several things. He rested on the seventh day. Do you think God rested because he was tired? He didn't rest because he was tired. God didn't get tired. God got tired, we'd all be in trouble. God didn't rest because he was tired. He rested because he was done. He completed the work that he set out to do. He'd completed all of that and he rested because he was done. He did so for several reasons. One, he rested to show his creating work was done. Two, he gave a pattern to man regarding the structure of time in a seven day week. Did you know that there was an attempt during the French revolution to change a week to ten days? There was an attempt during the French revolution to change a week from seven to ten days. So instead of measuring a a seven day week and a a thirty day month and they they were gonna change it to ten days and everything would be in tens, it failed miserably. It didn't it didn't work. We're on the seven day cycle. That's how God designed it. We're on the seven day cycle. So not only did he rest because his work was done, he also gave a pattern to give an example and, the blessing of rest to man on the seventh day. Now there's a lot of people that will say, oh, yep. And so because of that, that seventh day, that Sabbath day, then, you know, you're not supposed to work. You're that that's it on that particular day. You're not supposed to work. Well, here's the thing that we need to look at. Does God work on Sunday? God works on Sunday. Right? Yeah. God works he works every day. God takes care of self every there's no day that God doesn't work. So here's the thing. Instead of being so wrapped up in the actual day and saying, oh, on that Sunday, you've got a rest. The reality is the way that man was created, man needs a day of rest. Whatever day that might be. Man needs a day of rest. He needs to take a Sabbath rest to unplug from the things that are the stresses in life and to worship and spend time with God. Whatever day that is. That's what man needs to do. Man needs to rest. He needs a day that he rests. Is it have to be on Sunday? No. It doesn't have to be on Sunday. But in as much as possible, scripture also tells us to not forsake the gathering to believers. So we should try everything we can to not have to work on Sunday, but we all know there are jobs that require it. We don't have a lot of choice in this fallen world. That's the way it works. But instead of arguing about whether you should not work on Sunday, we just need to understand that we need to take a day of rest. We need to take a Sabbath day of rest, meaning rest from the stresses of life and worship to God on that day. Not just rest, but a day of rest and worship. Because when God rest, he blessed blessed man. He took that seventh day rest. And in all of that, he looked at what he had done, and he said it's very good. It's something that we should then worship him for all that he did. So we should be worshiping and resting at the same time. God bless that day and he sanctified it. He blessed that day and he sanctified it. It says he blessed it and he sanctified it because in it, he rested from all his work in which God had created and made. So he blessed it. He sanctified it. And so, therefore, we need to take that day, whichever day that that it is, and we need to use it to worship God and to rest from those things. In it, he rested from all his work. All that had been done, but I want you to notice one other thing here. Every day that it showed one through six, the passage ended. So the evening and the morning of the whatever day. Right? It never says that on the seventh day. On the seventh day, it never says so the evening and the morning of the seventh day. It tells us in that that, he sanctified it. His work was done. God had created it, and he rested on the seventh day. But it doesn't anywhere say in there the evening and the morning of the seventh day. The description of every day ended with that, but the seventh day doesn't. It's because God's rest for us isn't confined in a literal day. The reality is the rest that we seek is not in the day, but in God himself. That's the rest that we seek. And so when we get to that point and we're seeking rest, we're seeking in God. Our ultimate rest is when we join him in heaven and we have rest in God. But there is no evening and morning of that seventh day because everything have been completed and that signifies the end. And so it's the rest that we find in God. So important for us to understand that that rest that we seek is not a, it is a a rest in a physical sense, but the ultimate rest is resting in God and all that he does. So we need to look at it in that way as well. So, verse four through seven. Let's see if we can cover this. Verse four through seven, it says this. This is the history of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, before any plant of the field was in the earth, before any herb of the field had grown. For the lord god had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to till the ground. But a mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground. And the lord god formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living being. Okay. So several things that we wanna talk about there. First of all, understand that God made the heavens and the earth. And when it in this particular passage, when it says, when it says let's see. Let me find it here. And the Lord God formed man of the dust. And it says the Lord God, made the heavens and the earth. So in verse four where it says the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. Is the word Lord in your copy of God's word, all caps. That is the first use of Yahweh in scripture. That is the first use of Yahweh in scripture indicating Yahweh God, the unspeakable name made the earth and the heavens. It it doesn't say any other God. It says the Lord Yahweh God made the earth and the heavens. So it's the first time in all of this passage that we see the Lord Yahweh used. And so, it's important for us to see that and understand We get that Yahweh is the God that created all of this. No other God, Yahweh, okay, is the one that created this. He says before any of the plant was in the Earth. So history began even before there was vegetation. There was just like a a a space and a watery globe. Right? God didn't cause it to rain. It basically was a thick vapor over the Earth, and there was a, evaporation cycle that would then turn into a cycle of dew falling down on the ground. And that was what was happening. There was no rain as we know rain. So there was a moisture that would form over the earth to cause plants to grow and that sort of thing. But it was not a rain like we know rain. It was simply, like a mist or a dew that would fall, and that's where all of it came from. So God had not yet caused it to rain. In fact, the rain didn't start until the flood came. That's the first mention that we find of actual rain. And so he had not caused it to rain on the earth. He had not also caused man at that point. So things were growing and things were happening, and there was nobody working the ground. There was nobody plowing the field, planting the seed, doing anything. God was creating every bit of it, and it was all growing according to his design. He was growing every bit of that. And then it says that god formed man from the dust of the ground. So here's the one thing about that that I want us to really hold on to when it says that he formed man from the dust of the ground. He didn't form man out of nothing. The animals, the plants, the earth, he spoke and it was there. But man, he formed from dust. So he took the dust, the earth that he created, and he formed man from the dust. He didn't just speak and man was there. He created literally created man. He formed man. He took the time to literally think of it like this. He took the time to design every little element of man as he put him together, as he formed man from the dust in the image and likeness of God. He took time with all of that. It doesn't say that he did that with the animals or the plants. He spoke and they were there. But man, he actually formed with his own hands. He formed man from the dust. Now he formed man from, how valuable is dust? Right? I mean, look. Dust we look at dust as the worst thing ever. Right? Nobody wants dust. You don't want dust in your house. You don't want dust on your car. Nobody wants dust. It's the basic element. There's nothing spectacular about dust. And and basically, it has very little worth. Man alone without God is almost worthless. God formed man from something that had very little worth. Man himself apart from God is basically worthless. Man dies returns to what? Dust. So God took him from dust. He returns to dust. It's what happens in between. Right? But God formed him and without God, he's he's worthless. With God and everything that God did is the most incredible organism that's ever lived. God did something else with man. After he formed him from the dust and he took up every little part of him and he formed the whole thing, then god breathes into his nostrils the breath of life. He did not do that with any animal. He didn't do that with any other species. Mankind is the only thing that God literally breathe life. The breath of God was breathe into Adam and he had life. He formed him. He created him. He did everything and all the stuff about him and then he still didn't have life until he breathed into him. So he literally breathe the breath of life into Adam and he became a living being. That word breath in Hebrew is, Ruach and the, in Greek is Pneuma, and it literally means he put his breath or his spirit within man. God's breath, God's spirit, he physically put in man. Nothing else. We're the only one. Now think about that. Would he do that if he didn't have a purpose for every single one of us? He has a purpose for every one of us. He created us. He took time with us. He he formed mankind and, I mean, it even says he formed nostrils and then he breathed into his nostrils. So everything about us, he formed. We're still exploring the human body. We still don't know how everything works. If we knew how everything works, nobody would die of cancer. If we knew how everything worked, nobody would have, lung disease. If we knew how everything worked, nobody would have arthritis. Nobody would all these things wouldn't happen if we knew how every but we don't. We don't know how everything works, and god created man in the beginning. And we still don't understand it all. So god created us. He breathes his own breath into us, his own spirit, and we became a living being in the image of god to worship God, to serve God, to have a mission from God. And he gave us that mission. And so when we read all this stuff and we stop and think about today, when people are arguing about man and and how man evolved or how, you know, all these things happen and and it's different and, you know, all of this stuff. Go back to Genesis. Read what it says. How was man created? He was formed by God. His breath was given by God. The spirit of God was breathed into man. There's a purpose. God created male and female of the species. He didn't create one. There there are some that try to argue that god created Adam first, right, before he created Eve. And then when he created Adam, he was a, a being that had, basically, he was male and female. And for a long period of time, it was Adam was male and female. And then he created woman. He took him out of Adam and made a female. That's not what it says here. He created male and female. He created them separately. He didn't create one with both. He created them separately. And he created them for their own purpose. Each one, both of the same kind, humankind, but male and female, both for a purpose. The purpose to join together in one flesh and create life to populate the earth, to take care of the earth, to take care of the animals and the birds and the earth and everything about it. That's part of what we're supposed to be doing. So So we're supposed to be doing every we're supposed to be over all of that. And so God did that. So when we hear all of the noise today and people are trying to distort the biblical worldview and replace it with some other type of worldview, go back and read Genesis. Just go back and read if we just you just go back and read the first two chapters of Genesis, it is as clear as it can possibly be. It is as clear as it can possibly be. Why are we studying Genesis? Because the world is so confused and discombobulated right now and all these theories that are being presented as fact and all of this stuff that's going on in the world has the world so messed up and so confused that they don't even know what it's supposed to be. Let's go back to the beginning and see how it was created in the first place. So that's why we're back in the book of Genesis studying that book. Sir? Hebrew word Mhmm. For dust that that's used for that. The root is clay. Right. So that follows the it follows that all the way through the bible. Right. We are the you are the father. We are the clay. Right. They formed us out of clay, which it it it's a central theme through the entire bible. Right. That's exactly right. And, you know, the whole point that we have a hard time some I wanna say we, I mean, mankind has a hard time sometime understanding is that when God created us, He created us for His purpose. He didn't create us for our purpose. He created us for his purpose. We are creation. We're not the creator. And so he gave us the ability to procreate because he said go and fill the earth, But we are not the creator. He is. We are the creation. That's right. That's exactly right. It it because it's right. And and the whole point is if you if you have a hard time with that, think about this. If that wasn't the case, then every time a man and a woman had sex, there would be a child created. But it's not. It's created when God chooses, when he decides and when he creates that person. He says, before you were in your mother's womb, I knew you. Meaning he created everyone. So wonderful way for us to, get back into Genesis and get through that first, instance of creation and go all the way through the first seven days. We will pick back up next week in, chapter two. We're gonna pick up in verse eight. I believe that's right. Yes. Verse eight of chapter two. We'll pick up with that, and we'll continue on. Like I told you when we started this, this just study of Genesis will most likely be longer than a year. Okay? So we're gonna be studying. It's gonna take a long time. But we're gonna go through it thoroughly. We wanna study it. We wanna get back to the basics and understand what we need to know and not what the world tries to tell us. So we'll be back in Genesis chapter two next week. So for those of you who joined us online tonight, we will, be kicking off our business meeting in just a few moments. But I wanna say thank you for joining us tonight. Love to have you on Sunday morning, 10:45, in person or online, either way. And we look forward to you being there and joining in with us at that time. But for tonight, God bless, and good night.
- Feb 12, 2025Chapter 1 Pt. 3
Chapter 1 Pt. 3Full Transcript:Or times that we've studied this book. But, god, you reveal things to us every single time, and we're so thankful for that. I pray that tonight as we dig into more days of creation that you would reveal things to us, that you would make more things clear, and that father, we would use it to confirm our beliefs from the very beginning. Father, tonight, we give you the glory for it all, and we ask it in Jesus' precious and holy name. Amen. Amen. Alright. So Genesis chapter one. And, let's see if we can get to the right spot. I gotta turn way over here to the first page of the bible. Almost the first page. You know, there's a table of contents before that. Genesis chapter one beginning in verses nine. We're gonna read nine through 13. We're gonna come back and do a little discussion about that. Genesis nine through 13. Then god said this is after, if you remember, the second day he had created the firmament in the heaven and and above the heaven and and below. And so now it says, then god said, let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear, and it was so. And God called the dry land earth, and the gathering together of the waters he called seas. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, let the earth bring forth grass, the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields fruit according to its kind, whose seeds is in itself on the earth, and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, the herb that yields seed according to its kind, and the tree that yields fruit, whose seed is in itself according to its kind, and God saw that it was good. So the evening and the morning for the third day. So there's several things here that we wanna talk about. So remember, we're we're we're moving along, and we've already discussed that as the Bible talks about the morning and the evening of whatever day, it is plenty of evidence to believe that that is a twenty four hour period, not ten thousand year period or thirty thousand year period. It's a twenty four hour period. God spoke. It happened. And that's what it keeps saying every time something happens. God said it. It happened. And this happened. But it took some time. And as it took time, it was the evening and the morning of whatever day that was, a twenty four hour period. And so, as we see that, then we continue to to remember that as we go through this. So now it says, let the waters under the heavens be gathered together. So the idea is, remember when everything was separated and you had the firm above and the firm below, now what it's showing is that it appears everything is covered in water. There is no land. Everything is water. And so it says, let the waters be gathered together in one place and dry land appears. Let me ask this question. Have any of you ever heard the theory that all the earth was once in one place and it broke apart and formed the continents where they are now? Anybody ever heard that? Yep. And and and one of the things that they use for that is the outline of the shape on both continents that they seem to fit together. Right? Well, doesn't it stand to reason that if all that was underwater and the water then was separated and the land became above the water, that it would have the same effect? That it would look like it broke apart when in fact, all that happened was the water receded. The water was brought down and gathered into one place, and the land appeared above it. So when people say, well, it had to have all been one at one time. That's why it looks like a a puzzle. It all goes together. The whole reality is according to God's word, it says it was all water. And then it said, let the waters be gathered together and dry land appear. So, therefore, that's when everything appeared. Now, let the earth bring forth grass. Fourth day, let the earth the third day, let the earth bring forth grass. Now what has not shown up yet? What? Soil. Soil? Okay. It said the Earth will appear. We know people are not here, all of that, but what would be important for grass that hasn't yet shown up yet? Sun. There's no sun. There's no sunshine. Now look. Grass needs a lot of sun to grow. If you don't think so, plant it under a shade tree and see what happens. It doesn't grow very well, if at all. Grass needs sun to grow. It needs light. Right? But yet grass appeared. Not only did grass appear, but it says that the grass appeared. And when the grass appeared, it also brought forth plants and seed. The plants had to come, but notice what came first. Was it the plants or the seed? It was the plants. God brought forth the plants that had the seed in them. Therefore, beginning the cycle to allow the seed to become a plant, to become a seed, to become a plant, and so on and so forth. So having said that in that way, which came first, the chicken or the egg? The chicken. The chicken. Of course, the chicken came first. The reality is this. Think about this. As we know it, all vegetation needs a couple things. It needs water. It needs sunlight to grow. If it doesn't have either of those things, it won't work. In this case, it had the water because the water just receded, so all the ground was plenty wet, but it didn't have sunlight. But it did have light. Because remember, he created and separated the light from the darkness. That light that he created, didn't create, but it said he separated the light from the darkness. That light is considered to be God's holy light. That's what lit everything up. He had not yet created the sun and the moon. That hadn't been created yet, but there was still light. And in that light, the grass grew, the plants grew, they created seed, they had all of that. So, the whole reality when we look at all this, is these days of creation are literal days, not slow evolutionary development. Things that were created by God were created in full size. Now think about this. These plants were created as mature plants with seeds in them. They didn't evolve and then become a seed and then grow into a plant, and then on they were created as full size plants with seed in them, all ready to go. God had not yet created the sun, the moon, and the stars. So when you start talking about the evolution of things, and you start looking at the theory of evolution, and you start trying to believe that things began to evolve, and life happened, and then this happened, and then that happened, the whole theory is thrown out the window when there's no sun and there's no moon for that to grow. If there's no sun for that to grow, then how could it grow? It can't, except for that the light of God covered the place. So think about that. Many people often wonder how were they created on the fourth day, but night and day was created on the first day. Well, the sun and the moon were created on the fourth day, night and day were created on the first day. The difference is the light that created day was the light of God. In the fourth day, it became the sun, the moon, and the stars. So, we think about that. Revelation tells us that there will come a day when we will no longer have a need for the sun, the moon, or the stars any longer. Why not? Because the glory of God will light up everything. We don't need it anymore. We'll go back to the beginning, how it was in the first place. So it says, let the waters under the heavens be gathered into one place, let the dry land appear, and it was so. And it was so. Then it says, the earth brought forth grass, and the herb that yields seed, and the fruit tree that yields seed, and the fruit according to its kind. So plants were not created as seeds, but full grown. Fruit trees were not created as seeds, but full grown. They were mature plants having, an appearance of age because they had seed in them already. So they appeared that they had grown to a point they were developing seed. They were created as mature plants. One important thing I want you to see here, because this is gonna be repeated a whole lot of times in the first chapter of Genesis, according to its kind. Okay? So think about that. Every all the grass, all the plants, all the herbs, everything that came up was according had seed according to its kind. So that means that if a oregano herb grew, it would not turn into basil. Okay? It could not become basil. It did not evolve into something else. It may become different types of oregano. Perhaps, there would be different kinds, but it could never be something else. Everything that God created, all the things that he created, the plants, the animals, people, everything that he created, they could evolve to become a different type of species, but they were still the same species. They couldn't he didn't create a monkey that later became a human. Right. Because the monkey was created according to its kind, and man was created according to god's kind, in his image, and in his own kind. And so when we stop and think about that today, it blows the lid off of things like evolution. Okay? So in its kind, the whole point is it will never develop into something of another kind. Let the earth bring forth every herb that yields seed and every herb that yields seed according to its kind, and god saw that it was good. Now I want you to say something here. When he created the morning and the day, he doesn't say it was good, did he? The day and night. When he created the firmament above and below, he never said, and it was good. Then God said, let the waters under the heavens be gathered together in one place and let the dry land appear, and it was so. And he called the dry land earth, and the gathering together the waters he called seas, and God saw that it was good. That's the first time he said that. Didn't say that about the rest of it. When he saw this, the earth that he created, it was good. All that he'd created to that point, god said, it was good. It's not not not good. It's good. Now people like to turn things around. Right? When we study the scripture and it says, God brought forth every herb and every seed and they brought forth all of it and it was good. You know what I hear people say? Oh, well, god created marijuana, so it's good. We should we should use that. Right? Because it's good. Well, God created hemlock too, but do you know what happens if you use that? You die. Right? So, yes, God created all of that, but he didn't create it to be used in the manner that some have tried to use it. In fact, the scripture talks about in the old testament, in Exodus and Deuteronomy, it talks about the word sorcery, and it was connected with the making and taking of drugs. So the reality is that when we think about this, don't let people try to turn things around. God created all the herbs. He created all the plants, and they're good. So there's nothing wrong with using those natural things. There's not when used properly. When used properly, there's nothing wrong with that. But it doesn't mean that, oh, well, God created that, so it should be okay. Understand that. Alright. Thirteen said, so the evening and the morning were the third day. After God had created, I brought forth the earth, brought forth the grass, herbs, the trees, the fruit, all the seed according to its kind, and it was good. Now verse 14 through 19 says, then God said, let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night. Let them be for signs and seasons and for days and years, and let them be for lights and the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth, and it was so. Then God made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars also. God sent them in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good, So the evening and the morning were the fourth day. Now couple things I want us to see here. When God said let there be lights, why was it so? It was to divide the day from the night and let them be signs for seasons, and for days, and for years. Let them be signs. So God not only created these lights to light the earth, but he also created them to be signs. So since the very beginning, God has used the sun, the moon, and the stars to measure time and direction. If a sailor's out over the water and there's no moon, how does he know where he's going? Stars. He uses stars as a graph to figure out the direction he's going. People told time by the sun before they had app I watches. You know? Before they had their Apple Watch, they could look at a sundial. Imagine how big those things were. No. I'm teasing. Sundials. They had sundials to tell time. People could use all these different things for direction, for time. Even now, it's very easy to know on Airport Boulevard on on afternoon about 04:30, which direction you're traveling. Because if you're driving with your eyes closed like this, you're headed west right into the sun. Please don't close your eyes like that. I swear some people do. If you're on the other direction and it's not sun in your eyes, you're heading east. It's easy to tell that. It's for signs, for direction. It tells you the season. Depending on how high the sun gets in the sky, depending on how hot it gets, how close it is, how far away it is, it tells you all of those things. And so we can tell those things even if we didn't have a calendar if we paid attention to those. They're all signs. He set them in the firmament of the heaven. Now look. A few million miles more or less, and life would not be possible. A few million miles closer or farther away, and life could not exist on earth. God put it in the perfect place. Moved it one way or the other just a little bit, it wouldn't have worked. God put it in the exact perfect place. And because of that, when the sun burns, we don't burn up. When the sun burns, we don't freeze because it's too far away. We get enough heat and enough light, and things grow. We survive all because God put it in exactly the right place as he spoke it into existence. When we look at all of these lights and these signs and everything in the heavens, we can look at them and we can learn things. We can if you study constellations and those type things, you can tell by the constellations exactly the direction, all of that stuff. But now look, like with so many other things, people try to use things for negative. So, how many of you how many of you I hope you don't raise your hands. How many of you are astrologists? How about astronomers? Hey. We got a couple of astronomers. What's the difference? Astrology, they take the zodiac signs and they use that and try to tell your fortune, tell you the future, tell you they use it for, basically, worship of Satan. Okay? It is satanic. People say, oh, it's just for fun. I don't really look at it for real, but it really is a worship of the stars themselves and not of God. It's a worship of the creation and not the creator. A worship of the creation and not of the creator is sinful because God told us not to do that. That's an idol. You put the idol in, it becomes a form of worship, which becomes a form of Satanism. Okay? So that's what we really truly see. All of these things we know. But in Luke and Acts, it speaks of holy prophets since the world began. Holy prophets since the world began. There are those who believe these prophets are the stars themselves. That since the world began, the prophets, meaning the stars themselves. Why? Because the word tells us that the the we can observe the creations and see the existence of God. So the prophet since the world began would be the stars and the moon, the things that God created, and people could look at that and know that God truly exists. So there are those that think that's what they're talking about when it says holy prophets since the world began. Because when the world first began, there was no people. Right? God didn't create them till a little bit later. The sixth day. Sixth? Fifth day. Sixth day. And, so he didn't create them till the sixth day. So it was after that. So there are those that think that, but he made the stars. We look at the stars. We can do so many things with the stars, and it's absolutely phenomenal what we see. Now our United States government, it's more now, but and what this, commentator wrote is, at one time, our US government spent a hundred million dollars a year looking for extraterrestrial intelligence. It's more now. You know why it's more now? Because they say we have seen UFOs. We've we've we have. And we have seen UFOs. They're not called UFOs anymore. UAFs, I think. Unmanned aerial p, UAP. Unmanned aerial phenomenon. Right? That's what they call it now. Yes. We've seen that. We don't know what it is, but we've seen it. Right? They've seen something. They can't explain it. So because they can't explain it, we're trying to investigate it. So we're spending even more money now, James. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the point is that even though we don't know what it is, our United States government spends hundreds of millions of dollars trying to find what would they think may be life out there somewhere. We don't even know what's out there because we can only see so far, but they're spending all this money to find intelligent life somewhere. The commentator suggests that maybe we should spend a hundred million dollars a year to find intelligent life in Washington, DC. But that's the commentator. Okay. My point is this. Why are we doing that? Why are we spending all that time seeking that when the one that we should be seeking is god himself? That's the life we should be paying attention to, but that's what's going on. So when we look at all of this and we see not only has he made all of the things up to now, he separated the water in the earth. He's created the plants and the fruit trees and all of that sort of stuff. Now he's created the sun, the moon, and the stars, and he set them all up to separate night and day and to guide us and direct us in our paths and and direction and and all the things that we can, attain from that. And is the evening and the morning of the fourth day. So in just four days, we've seen a lot of things happen. We went from nothing to something. We went from something to more defined something. Now we've got water and earth separated. We've got plants and, that have, have sprouted up and and trees and seeds. Now we've got the sun and the moon and the stars. We've got all of that. Well, where do we go next? Well, let's find out. Verse 20 through 23. Then God said, let the waters abound with abundance of living creatures, and let the birds fly above the earth across the face of the firmament of the heavens. So God created great sea creatures and every living thing that moves with which the waters abounded according to their kind and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them saying, be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters and the seas, and let the birds multiply on the earth. So the evening and the morning were the fifth day. Alright. So now we got fish and birds. Right? We got sea animals and air animals. They're going on. Stuff happening out here. It's abounding great variety of birds and sea creatures. It says great sea creatures. The Loch Ness monster. Nobody's ever definitively gotten a good picture to tell if it's real. If it's not real, something's there, they think. Right? Dinosaurs. Here's the thing. Dinosaurs, the Bible tells us about the behemoth on the earth that talks about dinosaurs. We have dinosaur fossils. Yes. We can see those. We can tell you they were real. They were here. There were those that lived in the water. There were those that lived in the land, and there were those that flew in the air. There were they were here. God created all of that. So we know it says it was and it was here. God created the tiniest little hummingbird. And he created the the big old vultures. Right? All these different things that God created. He created all of that. He put them all in there. But I want you to say something about all of this. He said, let the waters abound. With living creatures, there's a difference. These are actual creatures that have a life. They're not a plant. They're actual creature that breathes. Right? It has it breathes oxygen. It moves through the water. It flies through the air. We have all these different creatures that actually have life. Again, he says, notice according to their kind. Right? According to their kind. Now when we look at all this and we see according to their kind, that means that those birds do not become dogs. They're birds. They may become different types of birds. Different species of birds are still birds. The fish still become fish. The mammals still become mammals. They're all but they don't change. They don't turn into something else. They may change to be more adaptive in nature, but they're still whatever they were. Okay? Now, I keep talking about that. Does anybody believe in fossils? Yeah. I hope you do. Fossils. How many fossils have we found that showed a fish that changed into a land animal that began to walk. We found fossils of fish. We found fossils of land animals, but we've never found any of the in between. We've never found any fossils of one kind of creature that was partly one kind of creature and partly another kind of creature and then became a full oh, we've never found that. Now all the fossils we found, we've never found that. Well, all the things that we've done, we have never found that according to their kind. That's what it says. So evolutionists also all the time give convincing examples of microevolution. And what I'm talking about here is so, for instance, a ratio of black to white peppered moss may increase when the pollution makes it easier for dark moss to escape detection. Or finches may develop different beaks in response to their distinctive environment. But at the end of the day, a moth is a moth and a finch is a finch. They're still the same. The fossil record, there's there's a, a Big Horn Basin in Wyoming that contains a a a continuous record of fossil deposits for what geologists say is five million years. Because this record is so complete, the paleontologists assumed there was gonna be a positive trail of evolution that could be found. Instead, the fossil record does not document a single transition from one species to another. Evolutionist Nile Eldridge wrote this. We paleontologists have said that the history of life in the fossil record supports the story of gradual evolution all the while knowing that it does not. I can say more, but I won't. All of this that we see, that God created the the fish, and he created the birds, and he created all of those things. But the whole thing I want you to see in this part too is not only did he create them all according to their kind, but in verse 22, it says, God blessed them. He didn't bless the plants, did he? He didn't he didn't bless the the the sun and the moon. He didn't bless the earth and the water, but he blessed the animals. They had life. They had life. Not only did he bless them, he told them to go forth and multiply. I think I heard that somewhere else. We might talk about that later. He blessed them. He created them. He blessed them. He told them to go forth and multiply. Right? Okay. So, big deal. That's different. It's not the same as what we saw before. So, by the way, just so you know, Darwin, the father of the theory of evolution, said that if it could not be proven that a species jumped, in other words, it began as one thing, it became something else, then the whole theory of evolution fell apart. And at the end of his life, one of the last things that Darwin wrote is, I have come to realize that species do not jump. Yet, today, we still teach Darwinism and the theory of evolution as fact, even though he said it's not true. So moving forward, the sixth day of creation, verse twenty four and twenty five. Then God said, let the earth bring forth the living creature according to its kind, cattle and creeping thing, and beast of the earth, each according to its kind, and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth according to its kind, cattle according to its kind, and everything that creeps on the earth according to its kind, and god saw that it was good. The earth brought forth living creatures. God made birds and sea animals, but now he's turned his attention towards land animals of various types. All these different types of land animals that he made. And he made every one of them, it said, over and over in that short passage, according to its kind. When we look at the infinite variety of the animal kingdom, both living and extinct, here's the thing. God is so creative, and man, does he have a sense of humor. I mean, God made a giraffe and a platypus. Those are some weird looking animals. He made the and he made a peacock. Right? How beautiful a peacock is, but, you know, the things that make it so beautiful also makes it hard to run away from predators. Ain't that crazy? But God made all of those things. And then we look at that and we think, I mean, those are some strange creatures that God made. There's so many different things. He made a giraffe. Listen. Why did the giraffe survive? They're the only animals that can reach that high to eat the foliage off the trees. Then he turned around and he made other animals that eat the foliage off the ground. And then he made some that climb in the trees and and do both. All these different things that god he made all that, And he did every he didn't make them and then figure out how it's gonna work later. He created them for a purpose. He created every single one of those animals for a purpose. I mean, I don't think anybody could sit down and dream up the animals that God created. It's just incredible the way that he created all of those. And in every single one of them, it says over and over, according to its kind. So moving on. We made it through day five. Right? Day six. We're on to day six. Let us make man in our image. Alright? So God created all of these animals and he saw that it was good, but we hadn't ended the the day yet. Then he says, then God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness. Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the cattle over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. Okay. So couple things here that we're gonna bring out. This is the first time we see. It says let us. It doesn't say god did. It said, let us us in our image. Not me in my image, let us in our image. This is the first place in Genesis that we see specifically a mention of plurality of the trinity. Let us make God in our image. So two things. It's us and our, so we know their plurality. It's not a single one anymore, and in our image. This is the only thing in all of the creation that God made that he said in our image. None of the rest of this did he make in in in the image of the trinity of God. This is the only thing. Man is the only thing. Mankind is the only thing that God made in our image. That's the only thing out of all that was done in our image. It's consistent that there's one God in three persons. Why? Because it's been talking about one now. It says, let us in our and we realize that there's a consistency there in our image. Now in this image, when we start and think about this, it doesn't necessarily mean in our image as in we look like God because God is not a human. God is not a person. What it means is we look like God in that we have, the attributes of God. We have the, the quality of God. We have the things that God has put in us. And so, mankind is the only one that has a, a natural countenance of looking upward, looking to the heavens, looking above for guidance, for peace, for everything. Mankind is the only one that has a variety of facial expressions. Such a variety. Most animals don't have that much variety. Now my dog can make some faces. But most of them don't have a lot of facial expressions. But we have all sorts of expressions. Mankind is the only one who has a sense of shame expressing itself in a blush. The the other animals don't blush. And mankind alone speaks. Right? So when we think about all these things, mankind possesses personality, morality, and spirituality. Sometimes, I question the morality and spirituality, but it's in us. Okay? And so, when we look at all of that, we see God's image in our image. These three aspects, these three ideas is personality, meaning the knowledge, feelings, or will to do these things that separates us from animals. Okay? We have knowledge. We have a will to do things or not. Animals just act on instinct. We have a will to do that. We have a knowledge of what's gonna happen when we do that. It sets us apart. Morality. We're the only animal that actually makes moral judgments and has a conscience. No other animal does that. And spirituality. Man is made for communion with God in our image. Again, God doesn't have a physical or human body, but he designed man. So in his physical body, we could do many of the things that God does. We could speak. We could talk. We could hear. We could do all of those things that it talks about god doing. This body is not patterned after god because this body is going to decay and fall apart. In our image, according to our likeness. Now why does it say that? Image and likeness. Image and likeness. Maybe we're gonna get a NIL deal. Image and likeness. That sounds like the same thing, doesn't it? Image and likeness. It sorta is. The terms for image and likeness are a little different. Image has more to do with appearance. Likeness has more to do with a a abstract similarity. So image would be a picture of you. A likeness would be a drawing that looks like you. Okay? Maybe a caricature. Right? So that's a likeness. Sir? Yeah. Yeah. You said like a doll? Daughter or a son. Right. Yes. Exactly. And they look like you, so there's a likeness. Right? And an image of you would be an exact, right, like a picture. And a likeness, like I said, could be like a caricature. You know what I'm talking about? Like, a funny cartoon picture that looks like you, but it's not you. It's a likeness. And, yes, children have a likeness to you. People can look at our children and go, I know who their parents are. You know? There's a likeness. Right? So they can do that. So we see that God made us and with the same image and likeness. So we have the image of God, but we also have a likeness of God. Okay? So even if we don't look exactly like him, we have a similarity of God. And then he tells, let us have dominion over all these things he's created. Why? Because God created us in his image, in his likeness. He created us to be like him. And so now, on this earth, he has put us in in charge over all of the plants, the animals, everything else that he has created. He put us over all of that. Okay? That's pretty amazing. That's a a very huge responsibility that he put us in charge over that. Let us have dominion over all of that. So what if we are irresponsible towards the earth? Well, God said we're supposed to have dominion. We should be responsible for it. Right? So if we're going around throwing out trash on the side of the road, that's irresponsible. We're not taking very good care of it. If we're mistreating animals or people or doing whatever, that's not we're not taking care of it. And so we're not doing what god has put us in charge to do. Now I would love to go on and finish out the chapter, but we are out of time. So we'll get into the last part of day six next week. And it's okay because we got a lot to cover with that. And so we'll get into the last part of day six next week. But we've gotten up through the first part of day six. We've got all the way up to the creation of man. Said, let us make man, but it didn't yet say they he made man. Said, let us do that in our image and let man have all of this, but he did not yet create man. We'll find out how he did that or what he did with that next week. Okay? Alright. So we'll pick up next week, verse 27, and and we'll finish out chapter one, and we'll see how far we go from that. Alright? So, again, one thing tonight as you as we sign off for those that are watching online, I I want us to understand as we go back to Genesis, as we study Genesis, one of our purposes in studying Genesis is to understand the creation story. It's to realize that the creation story takes a lot less faith to trust and understand than some of the theories that are pushed on us today as fact. And so, as I talk about the things and compare some of the things that are that are, being pushed in today's world, I'm doing that so that we can see what God's word says versus what the world is telling us so that we can then understand and be able to ascertain exactly how we believe and why we believe what we believe. Okay? So for those of you who joined us online tonight, thank you so much for that, and look forward to joining together with you again next week, or stop by Sunday morning, 10:45. Love to have you. God bless, and good night.
- Feb 5, 2025Chapter 1 Pt. 2
Chapter 1 Pt. 2Full Transcript:
Alright. Good evening. Good evening. Sounds like we need to go upstairs and play carpet ball, doesn't it? Sound like they're having a big time up there.
Well, good to see everybody. Feels like it's been, you know, a couple months since I've been here on a Wednesday night. Really, it's only been a few weeks, but, you know, thank you for Don taking care of last week. I got sick and, you know, I'm, praise God. I'm I'm not out sick very often.
I think that's about the second time in thirteen years, but, you know, sometimes it just happens. So I appreciate Don taking care of everything last Wednesday night. And, we're gonna, continue in our study of Genesis tonight. And, so it's a long turn in your Bible, over to the first chapter of Genesis. And we spent about two weeks covering verse one, I think.
Not really, but we spent a long time covering verse one. So we're gonna get a long way tonight. We're gonna maybe get all the way through verse six or five. We'll see. If we get real lucky, we might make it a little further.
But, you know, I think it's important that we take the time as we go through all of this to examine things that we might not otherwise think about. You know, you can open up the book of Genesis and start reading, and you can just read in the beginning and you start going through it. And especially if you've read through the Bible a few times, it's so familiar that you might just read over stuff that is really important or things that you never really considered before. And so that's why we're taking time to go through the book of Genesis, the beginning and we wanna go through all of that and make sure that as we, study it that God shows us things that maybe we really need to know. So I'm gonna go ahead and open up with a word of prayer and then we'll continue, in Genesis chapter one.
Alright. So let's pray. Father, we do come to you tonight. And again, we're thankful father for healing for, so many of our church have been sick and gotten well. And we still have some that are sick and, so we just pray for all of them.
We know there's a lot going on right now. God, we pray for all of our nation. There's a lot happening throughout our nation. Father with this new administration and so many changes that are happening and so God, we just pray for each person. We pray for wisdom for the leadership and that you would be with them and you would guide them with your word father and that through that our nation would return back to you father like we need to have been all along.
Father, we thank you for your word tonight as we open up the first book, the book of Genesis. Father, the very beginning. I pray that you would just help us to see things that maybe we never noticed before, to dwell on some things that we need to dwell on and help us father to take what we learn and apply it in our lives that we might be a stronger in our walk than we've ever been before. God, we just ask that you just touch each life, watch over us and and protect us, but always use us for your glory. In Jesus name we pray.
Amen. Alright. So the book of Genesis. Genesis is a Greek word. Does anybody know what it means?
Beginning. Beginning, origin, source, generation. All of those are different translations within the the Greek. The original Hebrew is, Beresheth, which means in the beginning. And so, since when Moses was, writing all of this, it would have been Hebrew, when he put all this down in the beginning.
So the title is the first three words of the first chapter of the first verse. And so in the beginning so it's important for us to remember because when we start thinking about now, think about this. How many of you remember being a newborn? Right? Nobody remembers being a newborn.
It was a long time ago. It was in the beginning. There was something. How do we find out what happened? We have to ask.
Parents, relatives, friends, family, siblings, they tell you about the beginning and so you can go back and learn about things that happened in the beginning of your life. For us to know what happened in the beginning of the world, We have to go back to Genesis. That is a record of that to find out. Now, sometimes I have people say, well, you know, you you go to Genesis is the beginning and you start reading about everything in Genesis, but, you know, it only tells you so much. It doesn't really tell you everything.
It doesn't explain a lot of stuff, and that's true. In fact, the Bible says that if everything was written down, the world could not contain it. So it doesn't tell us everything. And Moses was not there in the beginning. Okay?
So this word that was given to Moses was a divine word that God gave him, not a word that he knew from the beginning. It was a word that God gave him from some written records from some things that God just gave him. And and he breathed it into him. So but this is a beginning. It is in the beginning and this is the record.
So we talked about the beginning God created. There was no it it wasn't, well, God took certain things and made this. No. God created it all from the very beginning. God created it.
It wasn't there before. He didn't take something and make something else out of it. There was nothing there. God created it, everything from the very beginning. And so when we move into verse two, it starts talking about some of the how, Some of what was happening at the time in the beginning when God was creating.
So in verse two, it says the earth was without form and void and darkness was on the face of the deep and the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Okay. So let's think about this. First, I want you to turn to a whole another book, and you're gonna say, what? Why are we doing that?
I thought we were doing Genesis. Well, we are. But I want you to turn to the book of Psalm chapter 33. Book of Psalm chapter 33, and we're gonna look at verse six. I want you to hear what the Psalmist said about the beginning.
In Psalm 33 verse six, the Psalmist says, by the word of the Lord, the heavens were made and all of the host of them by the breath of his mouth. Alright. So think about that. It's telling us right there in Psalm that the word of the Lord made the heavens and the host of all of them came from the breath of his mouth. Meaning, he spoke it into existence.
Now, that's important for us to realize and understand. He didn't have to build anything with his hands. He didn't have to get down and and scoop up stuff and and mold things and make stuff. He simply spoke and it became. So darkness was over the face of the deep.
Now, this may describe in some sense, a sense of resistance to the holy spirit that God was now moving on the Earth. Because in the beginning, remember, the trinity was the trinity from the beginning. It didn't become later. It was from the beginning. And so darkness is over the face of the Earth, but the Holy Spirit and it's gonna tell us the spirit of God in a moment was hovering.
So the spirit of God moving over the earth and it says darkness was on the face. Some speculate that the reason there was darkness where the Holy Spirit was beginning to move is because we understand Satan was cast out of heaven. And where did Satan get cast to? Earth. So in the beginning, there was darkness over the face of everything because Satan had been cast out of heaven.
So the darkness not only is physical darkness, but it's also darkness in the spiritual sense. There's darkness all over this, and so darkness was over the face of the deep. It says the earth was without form and void and darkness was on the face of the deep and the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. The spirit of God and so when God began to transform everything into something beautiful, it started with the work of the spirit of God. Everything all the work of creation begins with the Holy Spirit.
The work that begins in you begins with the Holy Spirit giving you a conviction to show you that you need a savior. The word that God does through you starts with the Holy Spirit. All of that happens. The word that God created this Earth out of began with the Holy Spirit. And so it says the spirit was hovering over the face of the Earth.
Now there's this hovering, they the one of the commentaries I was reading said, it gives kind of a picture as if, you ever seen a a mother hen put out her her wings and hover over her young? That that's kind of that picture. That the spirit of God was hovering over the earth like that. Like this is the child that's about to have be born. This is what's about to happen.
And so the spirit was hovering over all of the face of the waters. And so God began to transform everything from what it was into something beautiful. Now, again, it was formless and void. The the definition of void is emptiness. Meaning, there was nothing there but darkness.
Okay? So understand that. There wasn't that there was an earth and then God just prettied it up. There was nothing there. It was nothing but darkness.
It was evil. It was nothing there but this evil spirit that was present as God hovers over all of this and begins to create. Now, also want you to understand this. When we're talking about this very beginning and God beginning to create, he wasn't only creating the earth. We're talking about the entire space.
Everything. You know, we talk about in the known universe now. You know why we say in the known universe? Because we know there's stuff beyond the known universe, but we don't have a telescope powerful enough to see it yet. And I imagine if we ever get a telescope big enough to see past the known universe, we'll still be limited and we won't be able to see past that.
That it will go on and on and on and on. So we don't know everything that God has created. We don't know. When it was formless and void, there was nothing there but darkness, and God began to create. As only God can create.
It says, he was hovering over the face of the waters. Then, God said. Then, God said. So I want you to think about this. All what's happening.
The spirit of God was hovering. Something was getting ready to work. There was a preparation for something that was about to happen. Hovering like a mother bird. The earth was without form and void and there was nothing.
Now, when we think about all of this and God creates the things that he created, most likely, when God created it and the appearance came, it was an appearance of what today they would call an old earth. And what I mean by that is all the scientists try to tell us how some of these things were created. Right? And they talk about the Grand Canyon and they talk about, you know, how the continents appear to be, you know, where they broke off from one another and all these things that happened. Well, when God created the earth, most likely, he created it with all that already there.
Well, why would you say that? Well, we're gonna get to it in in a week or two, but I'll give you a quick preview. How old do you think Adam was when he was created? He wasn't a baby. He wasn't a little boy.
He was a full grown man from the moment he was created. Well, if he created Adam as a full grown man, why wouldn't he have created the world as a mature world? Why would he have not created that as a mature world? So that's just a feast on for a minute. Alright.
So before I finish first three, look with me to Psalm chapter eight. It keeps going back to Psalm. Yeah. Because Psalm has a beautiful way of describing it. Psalm chapter eight, and we're gonna look at verses three and four.
Psalm eight three and four. It says, when I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the mood and the stars which you have ordained, What is man that you are mindful of him? And the son of man that you visit him? So what I'm talking about here is this. God's about to create we're looking at this.
God's about to create all of this. I don't know if you've ever seen the picture. Louie Giglio does a a thing and it shows the Hubble Telescope that went out into space. Right? Just before it exited our solar system where we could no longer communicate with it, they sent a communication and told it to turn around and take a picture of Earth.
And so just as it went to go out of our solar system, it spun around and took a picture of the Earth from the as far out as we can see. We know there's much more past that. In that picture, think about it like this. So on your television screen, if you have, you know, one like Bill with 90 inch screen on the wall and no. I don't know what he's got.
I'm teasing. You've got a big giant television on the wall, and something happens and one little pixel shows up in the middle of that TV. It's pretty tiny, isn't it? That was about what the picture of earth looked like from the telescope just as it was leaving the solar system. If that vastness is so big, and the earth was so tiny in that think about how big you were in that picture.
You weren't even a pixel. And Psalm is saying, in all that you've done, why would I even be significant? As a person, why would I even be significant in the overall of everything that God did and the creation that he made. And but so many times we just expect that well, God owes us things. When we look at it from the perspective of how big God really is and how tiny we really are.
Oh, man. It changes how we view God and the things that we look at. So look at verse three again. It says, then God said, let there be light. Let there be light.
The very first step that he speaks that is to take all this chaos, everything that's there and bring light to it. Now, God didn't say let there be a sun and a moon. That wasn't until later on. What created the light? The light is God.
God is the light in the darkness. Perhaps when he says, let there be light, the holiness of God is now the light that is making the darkness flee. It is the holy light of God that's making the evil darkness flee from him. There's light. Now this light, I want you to understand something.
There are just in our own little solar system. Not talking about the whole universe, just in our little solar system. There are billions of stars. Billions of stars in our little solar system. If you took a quarter and placed it on the earth, that's about how big our solar system is in the known universe.
Our whole solar system in the known universe. There are billions of stars just in our solar system. When God said, let there be light there wasn't a single heavenly body that created that light only God did. And he created all of that by speaking. We have to to think about it.
It wasn't simply the earth. That was just part of everything that he created. He created not only the earth, but he created all of the other planets within our solar system. He created the sun in our solar system. He created all of that in our solar system just by speaking.
And he said, first of all, the very first thing he did, let there be light. Not let there be man. Not let there be water and earth and, you know, ground and birds and none of that. Light. That's the first thing.
Light dispels darkness. So the holy light of God did away with the darkness that was there. The void was no longer a void, now it's full of light. Just by that, he spoke and there was light. And this is the really neat thing.
And God said, God saw the light that it was good. And God divided the light from the darkness. So, the darkness was dispelled, but it wasn't gone. But he divided the light from the darkness, so the darkness is still there. I read that and I wonder, god, why don't you just go ahead and do away with all the darkness?
You know, you you made the light. Why don't you just go ahead and do away with all the darkness? But God had cast Satan down. The darkness was going to be there. Did away with the light.
I mean, he put the light. It did away with the darkness, but it separated the light from the dark. That's all separated. What an amazing thing is that happens. I want you to think about this.
When God said let there be light and light was. And then the Hebrew version says, light be and light was. Just like that. That's all it is. He had to go through that whole let there be.
Light be and light was. Just like that. Anybody anybody remember how fast the speed of light is? Me either. I'd look it up.
A 86,000 miles per second. A 86,000 miles per second is the speed of light. How fast is that? That's fast enough that it could travel around the earth seven times within one second. All the way around the earth, seven times within one second.
That's how fast the speed of light is. God said, let there be light. And it was light. There was no lag. We weren't waiting.
Let's see what's gonna happen. Let there be light. Oh, it was there. Just like that, he spoke it, it was there. Some people say, well, what about the big bang?
God spoke, let there be life. Bang. There was. It was everywhere. I've heard people say this.
I've even heard scientists say when they talk about the big bang, I've I've heard scientists or believers say, the big bang and and what we know, it appears that there was an explosion. Something happened and everything went out from there. What was it? God spoke it. That's what it was.
And it went out from there. And so when we think about that and we look at it, that's incredible that God said, let light be and light was. Boom. Just like that. 86,000 miles per second light travels all the way across.
God created everything that he created by speaking it into existence. He spoke it into existence. There was light. Genesis tells us that light existed before the sun and the moon were created because they weren't created till the fourth day. Not only did he say let there be light, but in verse, four, he said it divided the light from the darkness.
In verse five, it said, he called the light day and the darkness he called night. So the evening and the morning were the first day. There was night and day before there was sun and moon. It's not the sun and the moon that create the light. God created night and day.
He created the the separation before there ever was a sun and a moon. Think about this. Does he in is he in control of all that? Yeah. Anybody remember what happened in Egypt?
What was one of the plagues? Darkness. Took the light away. And the darkness was so thick they could feel it. They couldn't see their finger touching their nose.
The darkness was so thick it was oppressive because there was no light. None of us have ever experienced that. We've never been in a situation where there was absolutely no light. The closest you could have ever been is be in some room that's pretty much airtight and no lights on. That's about as close as you can get.
But they say that we, our bodies, even generate a certain amount of light because of the electricity within our body. So we've never experienced that. But God took the light away and the darkness was so thick. They couldn't even see. So God created that.
He said, let there be light and light was. He divided the light from the darkness. He called the light day and the darkness he called night. So was the evening and the morning of the first day. Now, let's see how far we get from here.
Alright. So think about this. It was the evening and the morning of the first day. There's always this question that people debate. Christians alike debate this.
Was it a literal night and day? Like a 24 period? Or was it like a, you know, a part of history. A a, you know, maybe a thousand years was night and another thousand years was day. Was it you know, what was it?
Was it a literal night and day or was it, you know, more than that? There's there's a lot of people that that wonder about that. So, here's the thing. So was the evening and the morning of the first day. Why are we hearing the evening and the morning?
God just created evening and morning. And when he created evening and morning, it wasn't thousands of years, it was a twenty four hour period. It was evening and morning. He just created that. And so if he just created that, then God created the world in six days.
Some disagree and say well, it's not really days like we think about, but it's more like, you know, periods, of the world. It's not really days, but the whole point is this. God created, he made night and day, and the things that he put in his word, he said them literally if he meant them literally. There are some metaphorical things in scripture. But when it's metaphorical, you know it's metaphorical.
And so, in this passage, I believe God is literal. He said it literally. He meant it literally. And it is a literal six twenty four hour periods. It's a evening and morning of the first day.
Well, why would he start with the evening? Why would he start with the morning? Anybody know? What? Maybe you are.
Started their days at night. It was the Hebrew the way Hebrews did things. Today started at dot at nightfall. So that started at night fall, and it went from night fall until night fall. And that was the evening and the morning of the first day.
And so because that was the way that the Jews did, of course, that's how it was gonna be written. So evening and morning of the first day. So when we think about all of this, I don't think there's really any doubt that God created the world in a literal six days, and that I don't think there's any doubt for us to understand that God created the world. The way that it says it happened. There has been they've tried forever and ever to prove something else, but they can never start with nothing and get something.
So only way that happens is with god. Verse six through eight. Then god said, let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. Thus God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament, from the waters which were above the firmament, and it was so. And God called the firmament heaven, so the evening and the morning of the second day.
So the first day, light, and he separated light and dark. Second day, there's a firmament, and he separated waters. Okay. Well, what is he talking about here? Well, so here's what he's talking about.
The idea of a firmament is an expanse or space. That's a firmament. Okay? And so when he said he had the waters under and above it, there were waters under it, there were waters above it. He separated the waters and had some under, some above.
So they're actually separated, between there's space between them. Some scientists think that the the Bible is recognizing the existence of the significant water vapor, that's in the sky. That is such a blanket of of water vapor that it actually it's one of the things that causes, us to be able to have, the temperature variations. It doesn't get too hot. It doesn't burn us up.
Right. There's, the winds because of it. We have the rain cycle. We have all of the things that we have. It's almost like a greenhouse.
Right. Of what this this water vapor that's above the the, up in the atmosphere. And so there are some that believe that's what it's talking about. Well, if we look at the firmament as heaven, which is what the scripture calls it, if we look at the firmament as heaven, you know, we look at the what we would know as the first heaven. That's the sky we can see.
And then the second heaven, which is the atmosphere above the stratosphere, all of that, and the third heaven is where God lives. Right? So between the land and the first heaven, there's a layer of water that's on the outside of that first heaven. And so many scientists believe that what is talking about here is that was the separation between water on the earth and water above the earth because it was divided by the firmament, which was space or heaven. And so God separated that out and made it above and below.
Okay? So, there's a lot of of scientists that believe that. There's a lot of theologians that look at it and think this is exactly what it's talking about. So when we look at all of that and we see that it's there in that way, when we try to figure out how did this separation happen, God did it. He separated it out.
And he made this water vapor and he put it one above and one below. Now the reality is when the water evaporates from the earth, where does it go? It goes up into the clouds, right? Up into the sky. Waters evaporated up and then the clouds get full and then eventually they burst open and water falls back to the earth.
There's that separation. So we have it separated between the ground and the sky. We have all of that separated. All of that water happens. But remember, it didn't rain until the flood.
So the water was separated even more so than that until the flood, and then God calls rain. There was no rain before that. So there was a separation. So God has spent two days creating the the day and night, and separating the water from below and above the firmament. He spent two days doing that.
I think it's important. I think it's important that we understand that it could only work the way God created it. If it wasn't done that way we probably would burn up from the sun or we'd freeze or we'd have all these things that would happen, but because of the way God created it and the way that he did it, he made it perfect. And so we look at that we know about our earth. We know those things and we can see all of that.
We don't know about everything that goes on outside of that. Right. There's so much outside of our universe that we don't even know And and further out than we can even say. So, I'm gonna take just a few minutes to talk about that. Because we know that we're talking about now the creations that God has done.
He created night and day. He spoke and there was light and there was a separation. And then now we're talking about the firmament. Now the firmament, we're getting more straight down to earth. Okay?
So the rest of the universe, we're not speaking about as much anymore. But people have brought up this fact. I've said it myself. We have a the known universe is so big we can never possibly explore it all. There are billions and billions of stars in the known universe.
There are planets that we don't even know about. There are some that we know about, but we don't know much about them. And there are some that we don't even know about. And there's just within our solar system, there are planets that we don't know a whole lot about. You know, we're we're exploring Mars more than it's ever been explored in anybody's lifetime, But, you know, that's the only one that we've really been able to do much exploring.
We don't even know what there is to know about the moon than our own, you know, orbiting our own Earth. So there's all this stuff that's happening. So there are people that would say, well, why would you think that God would create all of this amazing vast expanse of heaven with all of that in it. And he would create that little one tiny bit of earth and put people on it. And that's the only place people would ever exist.
The only place life would exist on that tiny little ball. That one little but he we don't even know all everything that's out there. So why would you not think that there are more out there? Now I'm not advocating that there's little green men that are gonna show up. Right?
The fact of the matter is we don't know what else exists out there. But I heard again, this was Louie Giglio said this and I think it's probably the best way to think about it. What if all of that wasn't made for us? Right. We look at it like this.
Why would God have made all this for us and only had us? Why wouldn't there be something else? Why wouldn't God made it for more people, more things, more civilizations? Well, what if God didn't make it for people or civilizations or any of that? What if this is God's glory that he made as a testament to his greatness?
What if all of that is to glorify him? Remember even the mountains will will bow down before him. The rocks will cry out all of that. So all of creation to glorify and worship him. That's an expanse that's so big.
See when we look at it that way, I think we finally began to look at God in a much bigger picture than we look at him when we think everything centers around us. It doesn't center around us. It centers around God. We just happen to be a teeny tiny little part of it. It's a teeny little part.
So instead of wondering well, why would God only make those few people with this great big why would he make people at all? He made people to worship him, to glorify him as part of that whole expanse that he made. And so we think about that and we think about all this creation and everything that God has done and how he spoken into existence with all of that and we've only made it through two days and so much has already been done that we can't even begin to really comprehend in just those two days. Now we're gonna dig further. We won't tonight, but we're gonna dig further in and we're gonna start getting into some of the other creations and we're gonna get pretty deep in into this to try to, help us to understand it all a little bit better.
But the reality for us is to understand that all of this that was done was done by God. God did every bit of it. He didn't need anybody else. He didn't need anything. I think I've told you this before.
There was a, it was a a funny story. Right? That a man supposedly was, telling God that he he could do things he didn't need God. He could create things just like God. And God said, well, okay.
Let me see you do this. And he reached down and got a little dirt and he made it up and he made a man and he put the man up. And the guy said, okay. Stand back. I'm finna do that.
And he scooped up some dirt and got ready to make the man and God said, hold on. First, you gotta make the dirt. So the reality and all that is this. We gotta understand. It wasn't that something was here and God just molded it into what he wanted.
God spoke every single thing into existence. And even with a God that did all of that, even with a God that created everything he created, things that we can't even begin to fathom, we haven't ever seen, he made you. He made you. He made me as insignificant of a person as I am. God made me.
He has a purpose. There's a reason. Everything God made has a purpose. Okay. I want you to understand that.
Everything God made has a purpose. We're we're only in day two, and God has already made light. He's made darkness. He separated it out. He's made the water below and the water above.
He's done all of that. He spoke everything into existence, and he did all of it for a purpose. There's not one thing that God has created that doesn't have a purpose. I question that about sharks and snakes and spiders, but, you know, they have a purpose. I don't know what their purpose is, but they have a purpose.
Everything God created has a purpose. I say that because of this. How many people do you know that say, I'm worthless? How many people do you know that their self esteem is so low that they say I'm a useless lump of a human being. There's nothing about me that deserves anything.
I'm I'm a terrible person. I I don't even know why anybody would spend any time with me. Well, you have a purpose. God created you. He created you in his image.
And he created you in his image for a purpose that he wants to serve. He wants you to serve that purpose. Now our job is to find out what that is. And if we spend the time going well, what about me? How come, you know, this or that?
It's all about it's not about you. If we spend all the time focusing on your own self and trying to figure out why things aren't going your way and why things aren't doing then we're never going to figure out what it is that God wants us to do. Because we're too focused on what is it for me instead of what is it for God. I shared with somebody tonight. They were talking about all things that have happened.
They just don't understand. And I said, yeah. There's a lot of bad things that have occurred. But instead of thinking about all those bad things that have occurred, think about the good things that have occurred. And then I named out four, five, or six things just like that.
And they were like, well, yeah. That's a very good point. You know, those things occurred. Those were good things. Those were positive things.
And don't look at the negative. Don't dwell on that. Dwell on the positive things. What is it that God has has for you? Well, maybe it's not gonna be what you thought it would be, you know.
You know, maybe you're not gonna be the the number one draft pick in the NFL this year. Okay. That's alright. What if you happen to be mister irrelevant? Y'all know that's the very last pick.
Right? Well, let me tell you something. The very last pick from the draft a couple years ago played in the Super Bowl last year starting quarterback. Now got nothing to do with God as far as football. But what it means is even though everybody thought that person was insignificant, they had a purpose and they ended up fulfilling that in a way that nobody ever thought they would.
Every person has a purpose. We may not think it. We may think, well, I'm not too smart and I'm not very talented and, you know, I don't have a lot of friends and I'm I'm not well spoken and I'm not this or that. We may think a lot of negative things about ourselves, But here's the one positive thing I want you to dwell on. God created you.
And everything else God created, he took time to create you. Yes, sir. So my creation is further to that. Mhmm. For we are God's handiwork created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
That's right. And God created us. And that's the whole point is think about in all that God did. And and we think about the earth and how massive it is and everything on the earth and in that picture of all that is a tiny little pixel and all that God did he took time to create you. To me and every other human being that walked this earth.
That means every single person is relevant. Every single person matters. It doesn't matter where you come from, what you look like, who gave birth to you. None of that matters. What matters is God created you.
It was no accident. Your parents might have said it was an accident, but it wasn't an accident. It was just unexpected by your parents. God had a purpose. He created you.
He put you there for a reason. What is the reason? Well, so many people never spend any time trying to figure that out. They never spend any time trying to figure out God. What is it that you have for me in this world?
I got news for you. It's not to be rich and be well respected and, you know, be the best looking person on the block. You know, everybody can't be like I am. But, it's not that's not the purpose. The purpose is to serve him.
He has something for you. Yes. Yes. What is it? Would you spend time trying to figure that out?
I I tell you this. This is kind of my testimony. Right? I spent twenty two years in the in the military. Was thankful for every moment of that.
I was so glad that I was able to serve my country and do what I did. But at the end of that twenty two years, and I'm thinking, well, what next? And and God started calling me to ministry. It it was at that point I realized that God had probably been calling me to ministry twenty years earlier than that. But instead of taking the time to figure out, God, what is it that you want for my life?
I decided this is what I'm gonna do God. Now you go bless it for me. And that's how most of us are. I'm gonna do it this way. God bless it.
Well, what if that's not what God wants you to do? What if God wants you to go be a missionary? What if God wants you to be a pastor? What if God wants you to be a, ditch digger? He wants you to be a ditch digger and you tell all the other ditch diggers about God.
What what is what if he wants you to be a preschool teacher or, you know, whatever it is. God said, you need to go into vocational ministry. I got got a job for you. I'm seeking, okay. Well, now what do I do?
How do I do this? I know I got I'm going into what how do I do? I don't know. I've never done this. How do I do this?
Well, I gotta put out resumes. Right? I gotta just like any other job. You gotta put out some resumes, see what you can find, see what something's open. And I said, okay, God.
If this is what you want from me to be in vocational ministry, that's fine. But, God, don't make me be a youth minister. I don't wanna be a youth minister. Don't make me be a youth minister. I'm too old to be a youth minister.
As many of you know, the first place God called me was to be a youth minister. I said, you gotta be kidding. God, that's I I didn't want I didn't wanna be a youth minister. That's where you need to go. It was, one of the hardest times in my life.
It was one of the best times in my life. It was one of the most angry times in my life. It was one of the most loving times in my life. It was one of the most saddest times in my I mean, all those things happen. I learned so many things about how to be a pastor, and I learned so many things about things I shouldn't do as being a pastor.
I learned things that, how to interact with people that I never knew before. I learned so many things. And after that period of time, then God said, okay. Now you're ready. Now you move on to something else.
Now I put you somewhere else. Some people look at youth minister that, well, that's just a stepping stone. You just go in there to get your foot in the door. No. No.
God's calling you if that's what he wants you to do. I didn't wanna be there, but God said be there. You know? I didn't I wasn't perfect. I didn't do the greatest job.
I made a lot of mistakes. But I'm a human being. And through everything that I did, God taught me things. And God showed me things and he grew me just like he will you. What is it that God wants you to do?
What are you doing for God? Are you doing anything for God? Are you just asking God do everything for you? See, if God's big enough that he can create this great big world and he spent time to create you, there's a purpose. What is it?
Have you sought it out? Have you been serving and doing what God's called you to do? Or have you just been serving yourself and asking God to bless that? It doesn't matter if you're eight or 80. We still need to be seeking for God's purpose.
Right? Or 90. We need to be seeking God's purpose. What do you have for me God? You know what, miss John?
At 90 years old, 90 what? Yeah. 91 years old. Why are you still here? God has a purpose for you.
That's the whole point. You're still here because God still has a purpose. So we still need to be looking for that purpose. Whatever it is. And so for every person, we need to be searching for that every day.
God created this universe. He created the universes that we don't even know about. He created all of these things separated the night and the day separated the waters from the firmament did all of that, but yet he took time to create you. So one of the biggest things I want us to get out of our study in Genesis is, if God created me just like he did everything else, then what does he want me to do? Where does he want me to serve?
What does he want me to do? How does he want me to be used by him? And then follow-up when he tells you. Alright. So I know that I probably walked out of the picture on the on the video and for those watching online, I'm sorry.
I got a little excited tonight. But, thank you for being here with us tonight. If you joined us online, I look forward to picking back up, in verse nine, next time. And, we want to continue on in our study of Genesis. I told you this is gonna be a long study.
We're not gonna have this done in a few weeks or even a few months. Alright? So for those of you who joined us online, God bless and good night.
- Jan 15, 2025Chapter 1 Pt. 1
Chapter 1 Pt. 1Full Transcript:Alright. You got me, Don? Alright. Good evening, everybody. Good evening. Sorry. I was couple minutes late. I had something I needed to take care of, but, hallelujah. We're here. Right? Amen? And, so that's a good thing. It's good to be in the house of the Lord tonight. For those of you who've joined us online tonight, I do wanna, remind you, or tell you if you didn't know, we will be having our business meeting. And so we will sign off of our, Bible study at 07:00, to conduct our business meeting. But we're gonna get started on our Bible study first because we wanna make sure that we take care of that. We are beginning our study in Genesis. If you have a hard time finding books in the Bible, for this one, it's the first book. So should be easy to find. Alright? I'm a go ahead and open this up in the word of prayer, and then we'll dive right in to the book of Genesis. Let's pray. Father, we do come to you right now. We are so thankful to be in your house. God, it is a blessing. Sometimes we have a hard week. Sometimes there are a lot of things going on, and sometimes the devil just likes to get into everything. And so, father, we like to meet together in the middle of the week and build each other up to talk about, things and to share with one another and to reconcile and to, bond together in prayer. Father, in all those things, we thank you. And I pray tonight that you just guide us as we begin this study on the first book, father, Genesis. Thank you, and we ask it all in Jesus' name. Amen. Alright. So before you get turned over to the book of Genesis, you can go ahead and turn there, but we're gonna take a little bit of time to talk about, the book before we dive into it. Okay? I think it's important sometimes for us to get a a basis of understanding before we jump in. So the first thing is, when we come to the bible, most all of us that we when we're studying like we are tonight, when we come to the bible, we come to the bible with a knowledge and a belief that there is a god, that god is real exactly, as it says so in his word. And so we already kinda come with that belief. Right? And so one thing I want you to understand, when you read the Bible, it does not make, like, elaborate arguments for the existence of God. It just starts talking about God right away. There's there's no argument or defend or definition trying to help you believe that there is a God. It goes on the assumption that there is a god, and that's how it starts out. And so it it does tell us that god exists, and it tells us how we can know that god exists, and it tells us a lot about what god has done and how creation began and all of those things. But it doesn't have this opening argument for or against the existence of God. Because the Bible is God's word. So he's not gonna start it out with an argument that he exists. It's his word. He exists. So that's where we start. Psalms nineteen one through four says this. It says, the heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows his handiwork. Day unto day utter speech and night unto night reveals knowledge. There's no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. Their line has gone out through all the earth and their words to the end of the world. And so right away, we understand that the heavens declare God. The handiwork of God declares God. The Bible tells us that we can know there is a God by what we see he has created in this world. Even someone who is not told directly about God can see the things of the world and know that there is a God. So there's no reason to have argument for god in the beginning of the book. We can see that. Romans one two says, for since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and godhead so that they are without excuse talking about people or without excuse when they say, well, I didn't know. They can tell by the things that are already there. And God's word tells us that he has placed it in our heart to know that he exists. He already put that in our heart when he created this, and we look around, we can see those things. It's amazing when we look around the world and we can see God's creation, and there's no other explanation. There are people who tried forever to come up with explanations of the creations that God made, and they've never been able to come up with a true valid explanation. We come to the Bible believing that God is real. We also come to the bible believing, that it is the place where God has spoken to us. That's how God has spoken to us. We believe that, right up front. That's how God's has spoken to us, does speak to us. We can believe it because it's written in second Timothy, chapter three. It says all scripture is given by the inspiration of God. It's profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction and righteousness that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. So, absolutely, we know scripture is given by the inspiration of God, and it's profitable to us. It's how God communicates with us. So most anybody that you run into in this world, if you ask them, do they know what this is? They pretty much can tell you that's a bible. They may not know what's in it. They may never have read it. They may even say, I don't believe it, but they can tell you it's a bible. And if you start to ask them some questions, many of them know things about this bible even though they've never studied it, they've never read it, and they've never been taught it. They've heard things. They've been, around it. There have been things, so they know that's what this is. The bible is even still in print. The Bible still outsells most all other publications in the world. Even though you can get it online, on your phone, on everything else in print, it still outsells almost every other publication in the world. So we come to the bible believing that God is real. There is a God. We believe it's a place where God speaks to us. We can study God. But what we can't do is we can't take him and put him under a microscope, peel back layers, look at him, test him in a laboratory. We can know him by what he chooses to reveal to us. We can know him by what he chooses to reveal to us. I tell people all the time about studying God's word. Read it. Well, I read the whole thing. Good. Do it again. Wow. I already read the whole thing. Just do it again and tell me what you think. And most anybody that does that will say, you know, I saw so many things this time. I didn't see the first time when I started reading through God's word. Why? Because he chose to reveal it to you that time where he did not the first time. God chooses to reveal pieces of himself to us as we can handle it and as we need it. Even if you're dating a person. Right? You go out on a first date with a person, you don't know everything about that person. You only get to see what they show you. They hold things back. They don't give you everything up front. This is just the first date. We're just kinda, you know, getting to know each other. I'll show you more as we go along. Even when you get married, you've been married for as long as miss Joanne and brother Demar were, there probably were still things that weren't always evident because people just don't always reveal everything. The whole point is that God gives us what we need when we need it. He shows us what who he is and tells us about himself and reveals things to us when it's profitable for us and useful for us when we can learn from it and we can use it in our life. The Bible is definitely much more than a book. Don said tonight, it was funny because, we I knew what I was gonna be talking about. And miss Gail came in, and, he said, oh, you got a book in that box or something like that? She said, yeah. There's a Bible. He said, oh, you got 66 books in there. And I thought that was funny because the bible is much more than a book. It's a collection of books. It's 66 books. 66 books that have been written in different literary forms over different periods of time. Some give historical accounts. Others are poetic. Some are prophetic. All these different things, and they're all put together to come together for one book for us to study. Bound together in one thing for us to study. Somebody says, well, how do you know that the Bible is true? Well, here's one thing that I can tell you. From the very front cover where it says holy Bible, all the way back to the back where it says genuine bonded leather, all in between there, it talks about God. How do you what do you mean talks about? God talks about a lot of things. Yes. The underlying theme is God, and it talks about Jesus from Genesis to Revelation. All of these books go together. If you start reading these books and you start looking at everything, one reflects another, they all go together. Listen. Some of them were written four hundred years apart, and yet they still talk about the other book. They still reflect it. They still go together. How could any man get a collection of books over all those different forms and put them all together over that many years written by so many different people in so many different ways. The Bible's written in three different languages. The Bible's written in Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic, and yet it still all comes together. How could a man do that? The answer is he couldn't, not without God's direction. And so God's direction has given him that, and we can take the bible, and we can take it literal. Some people say, well, you know, the bible's not really literal. You you don't take it literally for what it says. Yes. You do. The bible is literal. Yes. There are things in the bible that you can understand that, they may be metaphors. People speak in metaphors all the time. People talk about that, but the reality is it's literal. Some argue, even in Genesis, we're gonna talk about this. There are some people that argue the seven days to create the the world. Right? There are some that will argue those seven days are not seven twenty four hour periods. They don't know how many how long it is. Could be thousands of years each day. They don't know. Others will argue. That's not what it says. It says the morning and the evening of the first day indicating a twenty four hour period. I fall in that category. But there are people that argue about that because they say, well, it's not literal. Well, yeah. Most of the Bible is actually literal. There are metaphors. There are things that we need to learn, and there are things that teach us other truths, but most of it, we can take it literal. When the Bible tells us of God, it's right, it's true, and it reveals to us the nature and the heart and the mind of God as much as we can comprehend. We can't always comprehend everything. That's why I say, keep reading it. My grandpa, every night, he went to bed. He would open up his Bible. It was about four times the size of this one. Man, if he'd hit somebody with that thing. He'd open that big old Bible every night, and he would read before he went to sleep. And I asked him when I was a young kid, I said, how long is it gonna take you to finish that book? He said, oh, I've read this thing through dozens and dozens of times. And I said, well, why did you keep reading it if you finished it already? He said, because every time I read it, God shows me something new. He read it dozens dozens of times. I'll tell people, keep reading it. The same scripture that you read over and over may tell you many things. Sometimes those teachings of scripture have a different application wherever you are in your life. You learn differently. You saw it this way when you were in your twenties, but in your forties, you see it another way. You see a different perspective. There are a lot of things. So study it. We need to learn it. We need to keep doing that. We believe the Bible is not a book of science, yet it does touch science. It's it speaks of the truth. If the Bible is false in regard to science and other things that we can prove, then how can we regard it as reliable when we cannot objectively prove many of the things that are there? Only way we prove them is through faith, through walks in life, through those things. If it doesn't prove science, then how can we say it's true? Science in its purest form absolutely agrees with scripture. It proves the bible in its purest form, But people try to take it out of context and take it away from the bible when it can't be. So even though it's not a science book, it has science in it. Even though it's not a love book, it has love in it. Even though it's not poetry, it has poetry in it. Even though it's not a book of laws, it has laws in it. It has all of that in there that God gives us as we need it. We know that the Bible is true, and we believe that the Bible that we have, that you hold in your hands tonight, if you have it with you, is a reliable duplicate. Now hang in there with me. It's a reliable duplicate. Why I say duplicate? It's not the original scrolls. This is not the original scrolls. We have a lot of the original scrolls. We don't have everything, but we have a lot of the original scrolls, and we can take those scrolls and we put them against the Bible. And as best that it could be duplicated, it's been duplicated in the modern Bible that we have in our hand. So we can still believe that. It's as as perfect as we can have it based on what we have. The Dead Sea Scrolls have been discovered, and they've been taken care of. There's all kinds of ancient manuscripts and testaments that come together to prove the things that are written in this book, so we can trust it. The Bible would be incomplete or maybe not even comprehensible if it were not for the book of Genesis. Genesis starts everything out. Genesis shows us how it all began. Genesis explains to us what it's all about. And, listen, if you didn't understand this, almost all of the important doctrines and teachings in Genesis, in the Bible have their foundation in Genesis. Genesis gives the foundation for these doctrines. Sin, redemption, justification, the promise of Messiah and Jesus Christ, the personhood of God, the kingdom of God, the universe, the solar system, life, man, marriage, good, evil, language, government, culture, nations, religion, all that you can find in Genesis. That's a lot. It's precisely because people have abandoned the truth of Genesis that society is so messed up today. If they followed Genesis in the beginning, society wouldn't be in the mess we're in today. John chapter five says, Jesus spoke of the importance of believing what Moses wrote. This is what Jesus said. For if you believed Moses, you would believe in me. Wow. How about that? So, according to the New Testament, Moses wrote the book of Genesis. Now here's the thing. Moses wasn't alive during most of the book of Genesis. How did he write that? How did he get all that information? Well, there are indications where records began and end, and all the parts of Genesis. There are passages and phrases such as this is the history. This is the book. This is the genealogy. And so all of this was given to Moses through God by other places where he found it written down. Other things, God just gave him directly to write down, and Moses was able to comprise the book of Genesis. And so he was able to put it all together based off those things. And everything around us, including ourselves, if everything around us, including ourselves, is a result of random, meaningless occurrences apart from the work of a creating God, then it says something about who I am and where I am the whole universe are going. If that's the case, then the only dignity or honor we bestow upon men is pure sentimentality because we don't have any more significance than the amoeba. We have no more significance than that if everything around us is a result of random meaningless occurrences. The world tries to teach us that everything that happened in the creation of the world and the creation of life was random and meaningless, and it just accidentally occurred. Here's the thing. There's a story saying that one day students in a great physics professor class, someone like Albert Einstein, said they had decided there was no god. The professor asked them how much of all the knowledge in the world they had among themselves collectively as a class. So the class decided to discuss it for a while. They discussed it for a while. They talked about it, and they came up with an estimate. They decided they estimated that in that class that they probably had 5% of all human knowledge among themselves. The professor thought their estimate was a little generous. Probably, they didn't have that much, but he asked them, is it possible that God exists in the 95% of what you don't know? Now think about that. If they're so sure about the things they know, but are there things they don't know? Yep. Is it possible God exists in what you don't know? Absolutely. It's possible completely in what we don't know. So that's a little background I wanted to go through tonight to just kinda share with you about our study in Genesis. We're not gonna be able to get into a whole lot tonight. We're going into Genesis chapter one verse one. That's all we're gonna cover tonight. Verse one. If you remember, I told you that our study on Genesis is probably gonna take more than a year, because it will be as much as I can give you in the time that we have. So in the beginning, that's a big statement. In the beginning. In the beginning, anybody know how John one one starts? In the beginning. It's different word. In the beginning. In the beginning, in Genesis is talking about in the beginning of the world. In the beginning in John is talking about the beginning of the existence of God, which there never really was a beginning. John says in the beginning was the word, and the word was God, and the word was with God. From the very moment that anything was, that was God. In Genesis, in the beginning of the world, that's what he's talking about. In the beginning of creation, Not the beginning of God. God existed long before that, but in the beginning of creation. And so when we look at that, it's a little bit different. In the beginning, God. That word for God in the beginning, God is Elohim. Elohim in that particular verse is a plural word. Now we know we talk about this and we go through in the study of Genesis, and it talks about in, some places, it talks about, they were pleased, things like that. And so we know that it's talking about the godhead, all three. In this, it says in the beginning, god, that word god was Elohim. Elohim is a plural form joined together. And so what we see here is in the beginning, God, that God, Elohim, clearly talks about the father, the son, and the holy spirit. In the beginning, right from the start of the world, from the very beginning, there was a triune God. God didn't look down and see his creation and go, they messed everything up. Let me make Jesus and send him down there and do all of this. No. From the very beginning, God, plural, Elohim, plural, was all three together. In the beginning, God, the godhead, created, Oh, created. That's a nice word. Created. Creation in its strict sense is producing something out of nothing. Can man create? I can build a house that wasn't there before. Right? But I had to use wood to build the house. But where did I get the wood? There was a tree that produced the wood. Where did the tree come from? I didn't make the tree, So I didn't create anything. I took something, and I built it, but I didn't create it in the sense of creating something out of nothing. The closest that a man and woman can get to creating something is a child out of their, sexual intercourse that they have as a couple. That's as close as we can get. And still, that's not something out of nothing because god already put in the man and in the woman the things that they needed to create that child. They call it procreation. It's not really a creation because it was already inside you for that to happen. So we cannot create. Only God can create. I I told a joke one time about, you know, a man said he could do what God could do, and, you know, he could do all these things. And he said, you know, you created a person out of dirt, and the man scooped up some dirt and started, you know, trying to create the person and all that. And God said, hold on. Wait a minute. First, you gotta make your own dirt. So the whole point is God created from nothing. There was nothing, and he created it all. So in the beginning, God, the plurality, the the the Godhead, the three in one, created out of nothing, not something. Real quickly, you've heard of the big bang theory. Right? Big bang says some space matter was flying around, and it happened to accidentally smash together. And this big explosion caused life. Right? And my question is always, where did the stuff come from that smashed together? How did it get there in the first place? If I I can believe that something there was an explosion. Life was created because god spoke and it happened. That's what the scripture says. I would expect it to be spectacular, but where did the stuff come that was that was all flying around? Where did it come from? If you don't think god created, then where did that come from? Nobody has an answer to that. Science can never figure that out. They don't know where it came from. They they try to come up with ideas about this and that, but it all goes back to it came from something. And god created from nothing. That's the very sense of producing something from nothing. That's what creation is. The whole point in all of this is he created something out of nothing. In the beginning, God created what did he create? The heavens and the earth. The normal phrase in the Bible for the universe, is what we see. So we call it the universe, the heaven and the earth. Well, here's the thing. To the Hebrew, this consisted of our planet and the atmosphere surrounding our planet in which he beheld the sun, moon, and stars. But it's more than that. When it says he created the heavens and the earth, he created the entirety of all that we know and the things we don't know all was created at that point. It wasn't just the earth and the heavens around the earth. It was the heavens was everything that we have found so far and the things we know is still out there, but we haven't found it yet. He created all of that. That's how big God created when he spoke and created the heavens and the earth. So when we put all that together and we think about it in the beginning, in the beginning of the world, God, the plurality, the father, son, the holy spirit, created out of nothing the heaven, all of the universe, and everything we know and don't know, and the earth that we know and we live on. God created every bit of this. So he created it. Hebrews said, our planet, the atmosphere, and all those things around it, but it's so much more than that. They didn't know anymore at that time. There's even more than that. The creation of the Earth was created and the heavens. Now the heavens, when we think about the heavens, the heavens that he's talking about are the heavens, around the earth, the space around the earth, the atmosphere, the stratosphere, even space around it. It's not actually talking about that he created heaven as we call heaven, sometimes referred to as the third heaven in scripture. That was there. That's where God lived already. When he created, he created everything below that. Everything that exists below that. Okay? So when it says the heavens and the earth, that's what we think about. He created everything as far as we've ever experienced and more when he created by speaking. And that's how he created the heaven and the earth in the beginning. Now when we look at all this and we see all of this and we put it all together, I I hope that you understand and realize how amazing the book of Genesis really, really is because it gives us the very basis for all of that. There there's, lots of things in the bible in Genesis that we can, look at and see through science what it's talking about. There are things that we can look at in Genesis and see life. There are things we can look at through Genesis and see their existence of God. We can see all of that stuff. And so it's gonna take a long time to get through it. So in the very beginning, God, the triune God, created out of nothing, the heavens, everything that we've ever found and the things we still haven't found yet, and the earth. Why you say the things we still haven't found yet? Because man has not gotten the ability to see past our solar system, into there's still space that we have not been able to explore. There's still stuff there. We know there are things there. It's still out there. We hadn't seen it yet. So, obviously, it's more than we could even really comprehend. And that's just the first verse. So it's pretty incredible when we get started in the book of Genesis. We'll try to cover, you know, a few more verses next week. We'll try to do more than one verse, but, we will get into more than just the one verse next week. I hope that you're excited about this study, this book of Genesis and the study. It is it is a basis that we need to really get back to. When we get back to this and we get all the way back to the beginnings and we see how God intended things from the very beginning, it can change your life. And it'll help you get back to where you need to be, not only in your walk, but also as you walk in this world. And so I hope that you, read ahead. Read ahead, study it, and, we'll get back together next week, and we'll dig into some more, of the book of Genesis. So if you joined us online tonight, thank you so much for being here.
Look forward to digging into verse two and beyond next week. For tonight, God bless, and good night.
