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Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Why don't we stand this morning?
[00:00:04] I know that not everybody comes forward for prayer, but I know that most of us have things on our hearts. So what I'm going to do this morning is just have us open our hearts to God by lifting our hands and saying, lord, these are the things that are on my heart, and I'm just going to lift them to you. I mean, you know, you could ask anybody. We have conflict in our world, but people are struggling. And so, Father, we do come before you today casting all our cares on you.
[00:00:30] Every anxious thought, every deep concern in our soul. We look at our world that's very fragile. But Lord, we're so grateful. You're the maker of this world.
[00:00:42] You are the one who is in control. And we thank you for your sovereignty, thank you for your love, thank you for your grace, thank you for your power. And Lord, I just pray, as we come may this day, may we experience new mercies, tender mercies, grace your grace upon grace. And I just pray, Lord, as we unpack, probably a very difficult text of scripture. Lord, I pray that you'll help us, Lord, to grasp, Lord, the implications of what you've done on our behalf and how good and kind you really are. And we thank you for that, Father. May we respond to you, Lord, Lord, with love, worship, faithfulness and obedience. In Jesus name, Amen.
[00:01:27] You may be seated. So I'm going to have you turn to the book of Genesis. Last week I started a series and I spoke on five words in the beginning God created. I promise we will share a few more texts this morning. We'll move it along a little bit. I want to turn me down just a little bit there, Josh. Thank you. I feel like I'm echoing here. Thanks.
[00:01:49] When Thomas Edison was seven years old, he overheard a teacher telling another person something regarding himself that he was actually what he called addled, which means he was confused, muddled, and unable to think clearly. It so distressed him that he, when he got home, he broke down and started crying before his mother, and he told her what had been said. And so his mother, Nancy, who had been a former teacher, he being the youngest child, she was distraught by that comment and how it affected her son. So the next day she went back to the school and she defended him. And he just pulled him out of school and decided, I'm going to teach him now. This was a long time ago. So homeschooling wasn't that favorable at that time. She just went ahead and pulled him out.
[00:02:40] She began to teach him personally. Years later, Edison was to write my. My mother was the making of me. She was so true and sure of me. And I felt someone I must live for and must not disappoint.
[00:02:56] Edison exerted a tremendous influence on modern life. He contributed inventions such as the incandescent light bulb, the phonograph, the motion picture camera, as well as improving the telegraph and the telephone. And in the 84 years, he acquired an astonishing 1,093 patents. In other words, that's how many think this guy's a prodigious inventor.
[00:03:22] Aside from just being a tremendous inventor, he managed to become a successful manufacturer and a businessman marketing his inventions to the public.
[00:03:32] But I want you to think back to his seven year old self in that moment with a few words. It literally changed the whole course of his life.
[00:03:42] It shaped the direction of his life.
[00:03:44] Few of us really understand the power of words.
[00:03:49] The Hebrew wisdom writers express this truth succinctly. In Proverbs, chapter 18 and verse 21, it says, the tongue has the power of life and death, and those who love it will eat its fruit.
[00:04:04] Do we realize that words actually shaped our universe?
[00:04:09] God spoke a creative word and life happened.
[00:04:13] God's word not only shaped our world, but God's word has the power to shape our lives. And that's what's exciting.
[00:04:22] In his book Understanding Genesis, Jewish scholar Nahum Sarna points out whether the Hebrew Genesis account was meant to be science or not. This is interesting.
[00:04:34] It was certainly meant to convey statements of faith. How many go, that's true. The Bible is not a science book.
[00:04:40] The Bible is a theological book. We need to understand its purpose.
[00:04:45] It's part of a biblical polemic against paganism. The word polemic simply means an argument against it. The Bible is meant to speak and show a different cosmology. Cosmology is the origin of things. Because in the day that, you know, scripture came out, there were all these different ethnicities that had totally different understandings of the beginning of the world.
[00:05:08] And it was really meant to be an introduction to religious ideas characteristic of the whole of biblical literature. So now we got the foundation, the beginning. What did God have in mind? And so he starts to reveal himself and his purposes. And it moves all the way through scripture. And Scripture is really literature. And God uses literary devices to convey to us spiritual reality, realities and truths. And we're going to see that today.
[00:05:37] He goes on to say, it tells us something about the nature of the one God, who's the creator and supreme sovereign of the world, whose will is absolute.
[00:05:48] It asserts that God is outside the realm of nature, which is wholly subsistent to him. And last week, if you were here, I began the series. I talked about God's self existence and that's a very important idea. We'll see that it asserts that God, he has no myth. This is really powerful.
[00:06:06] So you say, well, what do you mean a myth? No stories about any events in his life.
[00:06:13] You know, because I always have this. People ask me this question, where did God come from? Well, the answer was he's always been.
[00:06:20] And a lot of people can't handle that. You know, we're so locked into a beginning that we can't handle somebody who's self existent.
[00:06:28] And then he goes on to say this magic plays no part in worship of him. Now why would he say that?
[00:06:36] Well, I think it's a critical point and he wants to paint this Jewish scholar a difference between God speaking and magical incantations. Because how many know people practice magic back then? He practiced magic today. And magic is saying the right things to get a certain result.
[00:06:57] Okay, but we're going to see a big difference between what God did and what magic is all about.
[00:07:03] He says the pronouncement of the right word, like the performance of the right magical action, is able to, or rather inevitably must actualize the potentialities.
[00:07:14] Now that's a very interesting statement. Okay, that could be a little confusing. What's he saying? Potentialities is the undeterminate, undetermined, forthgoing forthcoming which are inherent in the inert matter. In other words, what he's saying is magic is trying to make something happen, create something. Okay.
[00:07:38] In other words, it implies a mystic bond uniting matter to its manipulator.
[00:07:44] Worlds apart is the genesis concept of creation by divine fiat.
[00:07:49] Now, some of you may not be familiar with that term, divine fiat, but that just simply means God's declaration.
[00:07:56] Okay? Notice how the Bible passes over in absolute silence the nature of the matter, you know, the things that are being, how he goes about and creates. God doesn't really go into specifics, but we'll see a text where it says God did this with understanding.
[00:08:15] But he never describes exactly what he's doing. He's just saying and things are happening upon which the divine word acted creatively. Its presence or absence is of no importance, for there's no tie between it and God.
[00:08:32] Let it be. Whereas the psalmist echoed it, he spoke, and it was. So now I want to just pause there for a minute and just say this. Can you just think about how powerful God is and how powerful his word is? That when he says something, he can create something out of nothing that's powerful.
[00:08:53] You know, it refers not to the utterance of magic words, but to the expression of an omnipotent, sovereign, unchangeable will of the absolute, transcendent God love. Jewish people, they like to give all these nice adjectives before the name of God, but he's basically describing some of the nature of God there. He, he's saying, listen, God in his omnipotent means God in his all powerfulness, sovereign. He's in control of everything unchangeable will. God doesn't have to change because he's perfect. You know, you and I have to make some changes because we're not quite perfect, right? There'll have to be some adjustments. God is perfect. He's unchangeable. You know, he's absolute, he's transcendent. That means he's outside of the realm of what he's creating. He's not a part of it to whom all nature is completely subservient. In other words, all of this creation that we see, all of this universe is under the control of God.
[00:09:52] How do you like that? And you know, a lot of times I hear Christians kind of, you know, put Satan equal to God. I just go, you guys don't even know what you're talking about.
[00:10:01] He's not even in the same league, okay? The uncreated, all powerful almighty God. Satan is a fallen angel. He was created. He's rebelled against God and he has a destiny that God has predetermined for him.
[00:10:21] How's that?
[00:10:23] So don't put them. It's not. Good and evil are opposite forces. That's a wrong concept.
[00:10:29] So don't be terrified. You know, when I hear people being terrified by evil, I said, stop.
[00:10:36] Just think of who dwells within you. If you're a child of God, the God whom the universe cannot contain lives inside of you. You have power, so you don't have to live in fear.
[00:10:52] In other words, here we see that God spoke and it happened. I was reading in Jeremiah this morning in my quiet time. In Jeremiah 51:15 he said, the Lord made the earth by his power. He founded the world by his wisdom and stretched out the heavens by his understanding. Hebrews 11:3 describes the activity and response of believers by saying it's by faith. We understand that the universe was formed by God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.
[00:11:34] So God is, you know, creating matter. The thing that we see out of that which has never existed.
[00:11:41] He declared it and it happened. So in our scientifically driven society, we've tried to understand the origins of our universe and life, isn't that true? And we want to do experiments. You know, science is about experimentation. Until you observe phenomena, well, it's pretty hard to do the science at the origin because you're just not there. There's nothing there to help you get that.
[00:12:05] So in chapters one and two of Genesis, all kinds of positions have arisen regarding the nature of how our world and universe came about.
[00:12:15] And so I'm going to just briefly try to explain some positions. Well, I said the other day, some positions exclude God completely and therefore they believe in what we'll call atheistic evolution.
[00:12:29] But even believers express different positions on how the universe actually came into being and have developed four main positions. And I'm just going to mention them, I'm not going to go into them. The first one is simply theistic evolution, which means they believe there's a God that created the universe and argued that his method was evolutionary and accept the current theory of evolution as change championed by non believing atheists. Okay, so that's one group.
[00:12:57] Another position is called the gap or recreation theory, which argues that between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2, there's an indeterminate gap in time in which there was the destruction of the original world. And so you read in verse two that the earth was without form and was void and empty.
[00:13:16] And you know that it goes on to describe there in verse two that darkness was over the surface of the deep and the spirit of God was hovering over the water. So this is a gap theory. And during the gap God created recreated the world with the unfolding of the various geological ages being found in that gap between verses 2 and verse 3.
[00:13:39] The third position view is the belief in a literal creation in six days. This view is also called the young earth position. The approach here is that all scientific data should be understood from a biblical literal point of view.
[00:13:54] And the Hebrew word, and I think we need to know this is the word. The word day in Hebrew is yom and it refers to an actual 24 hour day, unless the context clearly indicates otherwise.
[00:14:08] Now they will admit young earth people will admit.
[00:14:12] I'm not picking a position, I'm just telling you they'll admit that yom can refer to an indefinite period, in which case it might be more properly translated age, but they consider the usage in this text to be literal 24 hour days. Okay, so, and then the last group fourth position is called progressive creationism. Which sees the days as ages, which they argue that the order of creation fits into the geological ages. Creation then is understood in that sequence.
[00:14:48] And there's pros and cons to every viewpoint, by the way. I'm not going to go into all of them, but I'm just letting you know they do exist out there.
[00:14:55] But I don't think, and this is my opinion now, I think that we're not going to even delve into them, but rather focus on the first three days of creation and make some observations and some implications regarding what the Bible is actually revealing to us.
[00:15:17] And I think, as I keep telling us, just remember this is not science, folks. This is theology.
[00:15:24] Theology means knowing about God. It's an understanding of what God wants to reveal to us. And how many know that God could have revealed other things to us than which he did.
[00:15:38] How many believe that? And there's probably a lot of things you have questions about and there's no real answers to them.
[00:15:44] But you know what, you can actually survive life and live life and not have the answers to those things.
[00:15:50] So you're not going to know everything. There's no one in this room that's going to know everything. Just not going to happen.
[00:15:55] So God has given us enough stuff so that it would make help us understand who he is, what his purpose is and what he's trying to accomplish.
[00:16:05] That's what we're going to look at today.
[00:16:08] So we're going to look at this revelation that God wants to make known to us through creation and discover not only the creation, but who he is, why he did what he did, and how we went about it. And so we're going to look at the first truth or implication of creation. The first one is the nature of God itself.
[00:16:31] Now I say this and how I come up with this idea is just real simple.
[00:16:36] How many know? You discover who a person is and you learn a lot about them and their character based on the activities of their lives. How many? Well, that's true.
[00:16:45] So that's what we're going to discover here. We're going to look at what is God doing and we're going to discover a little bit about Him.
[00:16:52] God's revealing to us in his word about the beginning is that it's necessary for you and me to get to know him and know what is valued by Him. How's that?
[00:17:06] So he's going to use a word a lot. And the word is. And when he did these things, he says it was good.
[00:17:14] So we're going to look at that God is the one that determines what is good and what does he mean by that? So the subject of these verses, this is a piece of literature. The subject, if I was going to do grammar, the subject of chapter one is God.
[00:17:30] And the object in chapter one, in your structure of literature is everything he did.
[00:17:37] So God spoke. This is what happened. And we're going to see it over and over again.
[00:17:42] Now.
[00:17:43] We're going to understand a little bit here. First of all, you know God has more than one name because different names of God reveal different characteristics of God. But in this chapter, it's fascinating that the name that is used is Elohim.
[00:18:03] Elohim. And James Boice writes about the significance of this particular name. He says this is a plural word. In other words, it's not singular, it's plural.
[00:18:15] So sometimes people have argued, and even scholars have argued, that maybe the early Jewish people started out as polytheistic in their viewpoint and move towards monotheism.
[00:18:27] I don't know. I'm not a scholar and I don't know if that's the way it went. But I do know this. It's plural.
[00:18:33] But it's used here as if it were singular because the singular verbs are usually used with this word for God. And there are singular pronouns referring back to it to indicate that there's but one God.
[00:18:49] And we know from reading scripture the early Hebrew people eventually made the great pronouncement, and this is their expression of faith. There is but one God.
[00:19:01] There's only one God. They were the only group of people who were monotheistic, meaning believed in only one God. Everybody else believed in many gods. Okay?
[00:19:12] But the fact is that its plural also suggests that there is plural dimensions to God's being.
[00:19:20] And we must acknowledge that this in and of itself does not teach the doctrine of the Trinity. Belief in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, one God, three persons. But there's such a thing as a plural of greatness in the Hebrew language. That's another reason why sometimes people who are reading it don't come to a complete conclusion that God has to be three persons.
[00:19:43] It's not self evident that there's a trinity. That's what I'm trying to tell you. Okay.
[00:19:48] And later on, as he says, nevertheless, and I like what James Boice says, nevertheless, on the basis of the later revelation. What's the later revelation? The New Testament, particularly in the New Testament, we are right in seeing a preparation for that fuller revelation. So what's he saying there? He's basically saying that I believe this is a foreshadowing. It's highlighting.
[00:20:11] There's a little signal here that something's unique that's happening here. And also in the chapter, we read things like God said, let us.
[00:20:23] That's plural.
[00:20:25] Make man in our image plural.
[00:20:29] And so we again have highlights as to something's going on here that suggests there's only one God. There's what's the plurality about?
[00:20:38] And I'm going to go all the way and argue this way that you and I can only interpret the Bible correctly when we interpret it Christologically. What do you mean by that, Pastor? Well, let me point it out to you. Do you realize that the whole Bible in the Old Testament was designed to bring you and I to Christ?
[00:20:58] And that everything in the Old Testament is actually pointing to a coming Messiah? And when Jesus comes on the scene, he says, I'm that person. And then Jesus tells his disciples after his resurrection, you think, or he says to the Jewish people, when they were confronting him, you think you know the Scriptures, but they speak of me. Jesus then tells his disciples, after the resurrection, he said he took them from the law, the prophets and the writings, and said all of these things in these places. He showed them, this is what was talking about me. This is fulfilling what I was doing. I was born in Bethlehem, you know, I was sold for 30 pieces of silver. All these scriptures are being fulfilled in the person of Christ. So you and I, when we come to Scripture and we don't have what we'll call a Christological lens, we miss a lot of important elements to the Bible. We're missing the main message of the Bible.
[00:21:53] And a lot of people are in the dark about it because they don't see Christ in it. But this is how you need to see it. And now in the New Testament, it really becomes self.
[00:22:02] Because you get John's Gospel. Listen to his prologue. It sounds like he's writing Genesis 1:1 because he says in the beginning, same words as we just quoted here in Genesis 1:1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.
[00:22:24] And the Word was God.
[00:22:27] Wow.
[00:22:29] He was with God in the beginning.
[00:22:33] Through him the Word, all things were made, and without him, nothing was made that has been made. And in him was life, and the life was the light of all mankind. Who's he speaking about?
[00:22:49] Speaking about Christ, Paul, in declaring the preeminence of Jesus, states that very clearly. In Colossians, he said, the Son is the image of the invisible God.
[00:23:01] So if you want to know what God is like, look At Jesus, the firstborn, over all creation. That word firstborn means preeminent.
[00:23:09] He's a preeminent one.
[00:23:12] For in him all things were created. In whom? In Christ. All things were created. Things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible. So Christ is the creator of angels.
[00:23:25] He's the creator of everything, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities. See, that's, you know, you have all of those dimensions there. But that's speaking of spiritual beings. Christ created all of that.
[00:23:38] All things have been created through Him.
[00:23:41] We'll go back verse three. Now, in Genesis 1:3, it says, and God said, God spoke God's word.
[00:23:51] There was light.
[00:23:54] And it says, having created through him and for him. So now we have a purpose statement.
[00:24:02] Why did God create you for Christ?
[00:24:07] You were created for a purpose.
[00:24:10] Your life will never. You'll never fully discover your purpose until you discover Christ.
[00:24:15] You'll never really discover the meaning and purpose of life. I would argue that human beings that don't know Christ, they don't have. They have never really fully grasped what they were designed to do and who they were designed to be. Now, they might have figured it out vocationally, but they have never figured it out. What I would call, in essence, why they're here.
[00:24:39] He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
[00:24:44] So why is this foreshadowing of the Trinity here in Genesis so important? Well, I'll tell you why. And I agree with James Boice. He said this is very significant because when we recognize that the members of the Trinity are here at the beginning of creation, having existed before anything else, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, always eternal, then it says, the elements that we associate with the Trinity, love.
[00:25:11] How many know to exercise love, you have to have an object.
[00:25:16] You know, you have to have an object to love.
[00:25:19] So the Father loved the Son, the Son loved the Father, the Father loved the Spirit, the Spirit loved the Father, the Son loved the Spirit, the Spirit loved the Son. There was a relationship going on. There was personality going on. There was communication going on. Are soon to be eternal and have eternal value. Are seen to be eternal. Have eternal value. This is the biblical answer to man's fear of being lost in an impersonal and loveless universe.
[00:25:45] You know, listen, if you believe that, you just, you know, there's no God and you just, you know, we evolved from a little piece of, you know, something coming out of a slime pit.
[00:25:54] I'm going to tell you right now, that doesn't give you a lot of value.
[00:26:00] But if you understand as Scriptures teach that you were made in the very image of Almighty God, the pinnacle of God's creation, and that God created this earth as a habitation for humanity to. So that you and I could enjoy and delight in and have eternal fellowship with God.
[00:26:16] That elevates the value of humanity. And so we live in a day today where we, we talk about, you know, we exalt secularism, but we're actually depreciating people. How many think there's a. How many think that's ironic that we could elevate human beings and yet we're murdering them and depreciating them all at the same breath. But the moment you believe that there's a. A loving, personal, caring God, as we're about to see through Genesis, then all of a sudden, humanity is elevated and lifted and every single human being has dignity, value, and worth.
[00:26:50] How powerful is it?
[00:26:54] God's evaluation of his creation that added is good. Genesis 1, verse 3 says, and God said, let there be light. And there was light. And God saw that the light was good, and he separated the light from the dark. And God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. And there was evening and there was morning the first day.
[00:27:13] Well, we see three actions of God, or maybe four here in assessing his creation. First of all, God said he spoke, and then he separated light from darkness. And finally God, he saw that. He saw it, he separated. And then God said he named it.
[00:27:30] Now, I don't know about you, but naming is very powerful. It suggests authority.
[00:27:35] You know, when you have a child as a couple and you name that child, you know, that's a profound statement of authority that you have in that person's life. You're giving them a name. And for the Hebrew people, the name that they gave their children had deep meaning and significance in their mind.
[00:27:54] You know, how many names do you see with yah, Elijah? Well, that Yah is the name of God. They put God's name in their names. Wow.
[00:28:05] Meant something.
[00:28:07] Okay. Here we find that God determines what's good. And later we'll discover that God declares authority to humanity to name the animals, meaning that we're given a role of governance in God's creation.
[00:28:20] So God's elevated humanity and said, I'm making you guys responsible for what I made.
[00:28:27] That's pretty powerful stuff.
[00:28:29] But we're still accountable to the Creator. And that's where we've lost a connection lately. We're having a problem with that. You know, we think we're governing everything, but are we governing under the Greater authority. That's the question.
[00:28:44] So we notice after completing a portion of his creation, God just says, it's good. And the Hebrew word for good is tobacco.
[00:28:53] And Kenneth Matthews says the meaning of tob is quite fluid in the Old Testament as well as in Genesis, meaning that there's more than one meaning for that word. But it indicates, for example, if somebody's happy, that's tob, you know, or it's beneficial, or it's aesthetically beautiful, or it's morally righteous, or it's preferable of superior quality or of ultimate value. God goes, you know what I always say this God doesn't make junk.
[00:29:22] Whatever God makes, it's good.
[00:29:25] And, folks, when you and I depreciate ourselves, we're arguing with God because I would argue with you.
[00:29:34] God doesn't create junk.
[00:29:37] It's just too bad that somehow you've diminished yourself in your own eyes, because in God's eyes, you're of supreme value.
[00:29:46] As a matter of fact, you're so valuable to God that he was willing to come and die for you.
[00:29:51] That expresses value and his love for us.
[00:29:55] Here we see light is declared good because it accomplishes its purpose of dispelling the darkness that had characterized the earth. And this division of light and darkness here is the first of three separations that prepare the earth for life's possibilities.
[00:30:12] There's no place in the Hebrew thought for material being evil in and of itself, whereas pagan cosmologies, that's just their idea of the beginnings, depict the primal matter as threatening.
[00:30:24] Verse 31 confirms that all of God's created order is very good. So an ascetic lifestyle predicated upon the notion of an evil body or material world is inconsistent with the Old Testament affirmation of God. The goodness of God's world, its bounty, and the joy it brings to the heart. Now, why am I saying that? You know, some people don't understand the significance of a statement like that. But I'll tell you what this means.
[00:30:50] You know, sometimes in the early church, people thought it was really good to be ascetic. They'd go, they would beat up their bodies. They would, you know, fast and pray. There was, you know, they thought that this body was evil.
[00:31:04] That's not a Christian thought. That's not a Jewish thought. That's a Greek and Gnostic thought.
[00:31:11] Actually, what God's going to do is resurrect these bodies. How's that? So God created a material world, and he said the material world is good. Well, then why is there decay, death and dying well, we'll get to that in another chapter. But, you know, at the beginning, when God created the material world, he said, everything here is aesthetically pleasing. It's good, it's wonderful. That's how God sees it.
[00:31:38] So the original creation was good. And evil is simply a deviation from God's will and purposes, which comes about by rejecting God's authority and usually a pursuit of self autonomy. In other words, I'm going to play God.
[00:31:53] You know, people have a hard time surrendering to God because they're playing God and they want to just do their thing. But you and I see, God is the one who determines what's good.
[00:32:04] You and I are incapable of really figuring out what's good.
[00:32:08] We think we know. We make a lot of decisions. How many in this room, you've never made a decision that went wrong?
[00:32:17] Nobody raised their hands. I can't even raise my hands. We've all messed up.
[00:32:22] So my point is, you and I don't know everything.
[00:32:25] And only God determines what's really good. We think we know what's good. Actually, a lot of us think we know what's good for other people, too. And we even tell them, you know, but we're trying to play God.
[00:32:37] We don't know. God knows now, if his Word says something that's different, that's God saying it. We're just repeating him. Okay, so let's move on to the second truth here.
[00:32:48] It's the means by which God created the universe. And then we see this poetic rhythm happening in this chapter. Can you see it?
[00:32:55] There's the beginning of the. You know, God creates something on this day. And then at the end of it, he says, oh, it was good. Then you get the second day. Oh, that was good. Oh, the third day. Oh, that was good.
[00:33:05] I like the way God assesses things. You know, just really good stuff. Right.
[00:33:09] Verse six, he says again.
[00:33:12] Then he says, let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water. Water. So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. And God called the vault sky. And there was evening. There was morning, the second day.
[00:33:27] And God said, let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear. And it was so. And God called the dry ground land. And he gathered waters he called seas. And God saw it was good.
[00:33:41] Now, Kenneth Matthews says the theological significance of God's creation of the scripture Skies is the clarification that God alone rules the powers of the heavens.
[00:33:53] Now you go, well, why is that important?
[00:33:56] Well, because we're not ancient people. You know, ancient people had a certain idea. They thought the sky as the place where divine rule was particularly happening. And for the Samaritan religion, it gave prominence to the heavens in its pantheon of gods and a lot of mythologies. And these ancient peoples have the gods in the heavens.
[00:34:15] It was Anu, the sky God, and Leel, the God of the atmosphere, who established and deposed kings of the Samaritan city states.
[00:34:26] And then this one, baal, the Eucharitic pantheon, is identified as the rider of the clouds.
[00:34:35] Now, how many know that he was the God of storm and rain? And we know that story, remember BAAL worship?
[00:34:42] Wasn't it sad when Israel turned their back on Elohim and turned their attention toward baal and they kind of syncretistically brought those two ideas together?
[00:34:54] And so Elijah comes on the scene and God's telling them, go talk to those people and tell them they got to choose. There's only one God.
[00:35:02] And so what was the confrontation on the Mount of Carmel? It was having to do with having fire come down from heaven because BAAL was really the, you know, the God of thunder and lightning, you know, he was the sky God, you know. And so they set it up, and remember, they didn't even dispute Elijah. He was confronting him at their PowerPoint, and nothing happened. And all of a sudden, Elijah comes up and prays one little prayer, and boom, fire comes down from heaven. And not only that, there was fire, famine, drought for three and a half years because the Jewish people had violated their covenant with God. And Elijah just told them, he says, based on your behavior, God is saying, the skies are going to be brass. You're not going to get any rain. You're going to be in trouble.
[00:35:51] And now they have this confrontation. They repent immediately. What does Elijah do? He goes up in the Mount of Carmel and he starts praying. And then we read rain falls down after three and a half years. That was a pretty intense moment in their history. Right?
[00:36:08] It was a power confrontation. The passage therefore asserts that the heavens and their celestial inhabitants are merely instruments to serve God and his earthly creatures, and they're not autonomous authorities.
[00:36:22] So what he's basically teaching is simply this, that it's God that created the heavens, it's God that creates the sun, moon, and stars. These things aren't to be worshiped. But how many know people have worshiped those things from time immemorial, right, to our day? There's people worshiping today the stars.
[00:36:39] Does anybody know that?
[00:36:41] Yeah, because they read their horoscope every day and they're, you know, based on the position of the planets and the stars, they're determining their destiny of their lives. And this is fallacy. This is a lie from Satan himself. And so, so many people are ruining their lives because they're guiding their lives by something that's false.
[00:37:03] So we see here the power and the authority of God's spoken word, his assessment of what he's doing. He's declaring what's good, beneficial and what has ultimate value. What we discover in the book of Genesis is that when there's a deviation from God's word, which now is defined as evil, is not beneficial, nor does it have value both in this life life and the life to come.
[00:37:25] So what's the significance of God's word?
[00:37:27] Well, the Hebrew community understood God's creative word was the same authoritative word by which he brought about the affairs of human history. So not only does God create the universe and creates the planet, but God creates a people group, he creates a nation, he creates the community of Israel.
[00:37:47] And in that creation, God called light into existence as we see, to curb darkness. And in the wilderness, Israel enjoyed the cloud by day and the pillar of fire for light by night. Isn't that amazing? So God is a light. And God used His presence and he showed the Egyptians there darkness while he showed the Israelites light.
[00:38:11] And one was able to escape because they were walking in the light while the others were in darkness and. And they ended up perishing. And how many know? It's a beautiful metaphor and a picture of what life is really like right now. If you and I are walking in the Word, which is a light unto our path and the lamp unto our feet, that you and I are walking in the light. And we're cause we're called the children of light. And so you and I can live and navigate this life successfully while people who are walking in darkness are in danger.
[00:38:41] Because how many know it's easy to stumble in the dark darkness.
[00:38:44] That's true.
[00:38:47] But not only is this true for the Old Testament people, it's equally true for us today.
[00:38:52] Listen to what John writes in his letter.
[00:38:54] John 1 John 1:5. This is the message we heard from him and declare to you, God is light and in him there's no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness. Now he's speaking of moral darkness.
[00:39:09] We lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light as he is in the Light. We have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. How many think that's beautiful? As you and I are walking in accordance to what God's word is laying down, what's happening? We're in fellowship with God and he's cleansing us moment by moment from our sin. And not only that, because we're in the light, we have fellowship with others who are in the light.
[00:39:37] But what happens when you and I deviate from the path of life? We step off into darkness. What starts happening is we're moving away from the light and now things are obscured and it affects our relationship with God. So now we're alienated from God, but it also affects our relationship with other people who are in the light.
[00:39:55] Now we have contention and strife and difficulty.
[00:39:59] So it's important that you and I walk in wisdom. Walk in the light.
[00:40:05] So what should we glean from God's powerful, creative and enduring word? Well, what are we building our lives on? You know, and I read this verse here earlier in prayer time, but I wanted to say something.
[00:40:17] God's word is so amazing.
[00:40:20] But you know what I think happens in our lives? Because we're material and we have a material body and we're created in a material world.
[00:40:28] Our senses, our mind, our senses affect how we respond to the material things we see. And so we begin to believe that this world that we're living in is more real than the world that we cannot see. How many go? That's true. We have a hard time understanding that God's word, which is eternal and invisible, is actually the enduring thing. And that which we see seems to be so permanent to us is actually the non permanent unenduring, the little vapor that's disappearing. Everything is changing before our eyes. Time seems to be speeding up. We're seeing tremendous change at tremendous rates. Nothing stays the same. And yet we seem to cling on to that which we can see rather than trust. The unseen eternal word of God, which has been the same word that came to Abraham, is the same word that comes to us.
[00:41:21] God is faithful to his word.
[00:41:24] It's enduring. If you're building your life on God's word, you're building it on a rock. But if you're building your life on, you know, just, you know, being moved by the emotions and your actions are basically, you know, not. Not in conformity to God. I mean, you may know the word of God, there's too many people that know the Bible, but they're not living it. And so they're building their life on sand. And when the storms come, they just crater. They can't handle it because they're not developing properly. They're not maturing, they're not growing. They're not learning to know who God is and walk with God and understand his ways. And so they fail.
[00:42:04] God promises his faithfulness will continue through all generations. You've established the earth and it endures.
[00:42:11] Now, let me just.
[00:42:16] Maybe I have time to do this. Yeah, I'll try. Okay. So here I am. I'm thinking about what happens when we respond to God's word, the transformation that occurs. I want to give you an idea. So often, you know, when we worship God, we think we worship God oftentimes because he's our Savior. And I think it's a great reason to worship God for. I don't. I don't dispute that. The evangelicals were really good about that. We like to focus on Jesus. We focus on what he did. He's the central person of the church.
[00:42:43] It's all good.
[00:42:45] But I want to point out to you there's another reason for worshiping God. Let's look at Psalm 95 for a minute. Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord. Let us shout aloud to the rock of what?
[00:42:54] Our salvation. So that's the redemptive work of God. Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song. For the Lord is the great God, the great King, above all gods. In his hands are the depths of the earth.
[00:43:07] And the mountain peaks belong to Him. Now where have we gone here? We've shifted to God is my Creator. Look what happens. The sea is his, for he made it. And his hands formed the dry land.
[00:43:18] So what are we getting now? We're focusing on God as Creator. Come, let us bow down in worship. Let us kneel before the Lord. What?
[00:43:27] Our Maker.
[00:43:29] And if he's my maker, therefore I'm accountable to the one who created me.
[00:43:35] And we are his people, the people of his pasture, the flock under his care.
[00:43:44] Now we're talking about God's care for us as his people.
[00:43:48] What an amazing thing.
[00:43:50] I'm worshiping God because He's not only my redeemer and my Savior, but He's my creator and Maker. And he's the one that's taking care of me.
[00:43:59] I am totally dependent on God. I cannot make it apart from him like a little sheep needing my shepherd to actually provide for my every need. Let me move to the final point here.
[00:44:14] Well, yeah, then there's a Warning. Today, today. It's always today with God. Today, if you would only hear his voice.
[00:44:23] Do not harden your hearts.
[00:44:25] We're always warned, you know, listen, if God's talking to me, I need to respond to it. I can't just when I don't act in obedience and I don't apply what God's teaching me, I'm hardening my heart and I'm in a state of rebellion. And you know what? We get in trouble. Let me go to the third point here.
[00:44:41] It's the result we have this continuation of creation where God is fashioning a habitation for humanity.
[00:44:49] Verses 11 through 13.
[00:44:52] The Lord said, let the land produce vegetation, seed bearing plants and trees on the land that bears fruit with spring seed in it according to their various kinds. And it was so. And the land produced vegetation, plants bearing seed according to their kinds, and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning. The third day, what we see here is that God now is going to sustain life and he's producing a reproductive way of going about it.
[00:45:21] Seeds that actually can reproduce.
[00:45:25] And here's what Kenneth Matthews says. Unlike the first two days of creation, the third day includes a second act of creation. And after the appearance of land masses, God creates vegetation. This is the climax of the first grouping of days, where for the first time the earth becomes productive.
[00:45:46] The presence of vegetation prepares the way for the life systems to follow by providing the diet for animal and human life. Also for the first time, God's creative decree is indirect. The land is commanded to produce vegetation. Wow, that's neat.
[00:46:01] There is no hint of the pagan notion of Mother Earth.
[00:46:05] The land by itself, of course does not produce vegetation. Rather, God enables the land to do so by his creative word.
[00:46:13] Whereas the ancients believed that vegetation and all reproducing processes were dependent dependent upon the procreation of the gods.
[00:46:22] The Genesis account attributes vegetation to the inanimate soil.
[00:46:29] So the sensual practices involved in fertility worship reflected the pagan misconception of life's origins and renewals.
[00:46:38] Wow.
[00:46:40] Then he goes on here, in the first three days we have the preparation for the place in which we will come to an have. But we learn of God's.
[00:46:47] Let me just go back here, that's my conclusion. But let me just say this, what he's saying. How many know when you're reading your Bible, all of these false religious in an agrarian culture, all these false religions, they all had immorality prevalent total because they believed in fertility. And they believed they had to act it out. They were kind of acting out what they thought the gods in the heavens were doing. And that was a total deception of what was really going on.
[00:47:13] And so the Israelites, the Hebrew people, got swept up into this stuff.
[00:47:18] You know, they got, you know, they got caught up. They got caught up in the world they were living in.
[00:47:25] Does that sound kind of familiar?
[00:47:27] How many Christians get caught up in the world in which they're living in when God is calling us to something totally different?
[00:47:38] That's the challenge.
[00:47:40] So here as I close, in the first three days, we have the preparation for the place in which we will come to live earth.
[00:47:47] We learn of God's powerful, creative word to establish life and determine what is good morally and aesthetically. What we ought to take away from the creation narrative is that God alone is Creator. His Word is eternal and unchanging. And his Word, when obeyed, sustains us in the chaos and the changing world around us.
[00:48:07] Our response should be worship for who God is and what he's done.
[00:48:12] True worship moves to faithfulness and obedience. And so what's going to happen now in the Book of Genesis? You're going to love this, but you're going to see a pattern.
[00:48:22] God shows grace.
[00:48:26] Human beings, we fail.
[00:48:28] God chose grace, we fail. God shows grace, we fail. God shows grace, we fail. God shows grace, we fail.
[00:48:37] That's the pattern.
[00:48:40] But don't get too excited, because when I look at our lives, God shows us grace, we fail.
[00:48:47] God shows us grace, we fail. God shows us grace, we fail. What does this tell you?
[00:48:53] God is gracious.
[00:48:57] Stand.
[00:49:03] Do we have a good God?
[00:49:05] And don't we have a God that does everything good?
[00:49:10] And aren't you glad for this good God?
[00:49:14] I think he's worthy of our worship.
[00:49:17] He's worthy of our praise. He's worthy of us. Worship is not just coming and lifting our hands and singing a few songs and clapping your hands. Those are all expressions of worship.
[00:49:27] Worship is the giving of a life, moment by moment and day by day.
[00:49:33] I worship God when I obey Him. I worship God when I seek Him. I worship God when I do what God's asking me to do. I'm worshiping Him.
[00:49:42] I'm worshiping him when I'm working, and I'm worshiping Him when I'm sleeping.
[00:49:48] Our life is meant to be worshiped in him because we're telling God, you're worth it, you're worth it, and I'm dependent.
[00:50:00] And so, Father, we pray this morning as we leave this place.
[00:50:03] May there have been deposited within our minds and hearts a great gratitude in our soul for what you have done for us.
[00:50:16] You have so blessed us.
[00:50:18] You have given us meaning and purpose.
[00:50:21] You have taken care of us and enriched us and provided for us.
[00:50:25] Lord, help us not to deviate from your path.
[00:50:28] Help me to walk in the light. Help us to walk in the light as you were in the light, so that we can have fellowship with you and with one another.
[00:50:37] And may, moment by moment, may your blood continue to bring cleansing to our souls.
[00:50:43] Because so often we sin and we're totally oblivious to it. We don't even realize it. But I'm so grateful for grace upon grace, and I thank you for it. In Jesus name, amen. God bless you as you leave.
