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[0:00] Anticipation. I'm clicking. Let's see what we have up here. Did anybody guess right?

[0:21] Oh, look at you guys. Come on. I gave just a little bit of a hint last week, didn't I? For this new book.

[0:31] Now, let me say at the outset that I'm not committing on the front end to preach all of Genesis.

[0:42] Maybe. We'll see. Here's what I'm committing to. I'm committing to preach the first 11 chapters. We'll get God willing and I have breath for life and Jesus doesn't come back before then.

[0:55] Years from now, when I finish chapter 11. They think I'm kidding. Oh, yeah. We know. We know.

[1:07] Years from now, when I finish chapter 11. We'll see if we move through the remainder of Genesis. That may be exactly how the Lord leads. But at least I know one through 11 is what I hope to cover.

[1:19] So the foundation for everything. Is my title. God created. That's the foundation for everything. The world doesn't believe that.

[1:32] There was a time in your life. You didn't believe that time in my life. I didn't believe that. But that is the foundation for everything. God created. We're just going to deal with one verse this morning.

[1:44] And I've taken that particular title to kind of mark out this series that we will do in Genesis 1 through 11. So let's read the first verse from the first chapter in the first book of God's holy word.

[2:04] In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. That is the foundation for everything.

[2:16] And so a hearty amen is very appropriate. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

[2:27] And so it begins. It shouldn't be. But the big controversy is the it. And so it begins.

[2:40] What begins? God? No. Life? The Bible tells us.

[2:51] In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now, Moses is telling us a story.

[3:02] This is in narrative form. This is a true account for the foundation of our world. So this is God's story.

[3:14] God's story tells the truth of earth's past, present, and future. From the earth's breathtaking beauty to its ongoing downward decay.

[3:31] From the human race's fall into depravity and the reason for evil. The fool has said in his heart, there is no God.

[3:46] To mankind's greatest need and the reason for our redemption. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. Genesis deals with all of that and everything in between.

[4:02] Fittingly, as with all stories, Genesis has a beginning. The book of Genesis, like every other narrative, contains many true accounts.

[4:13] Which have their separate own beginnings and middles and ends. So a plot. There are many different plots going on in the book of Genesis. But there's one major plot that drives through the entire thing.

[4:26] In the beginning, God created. That's the foundation and main theme driving through the entire scripture. In the first chapter of Genesis, we're given the true eyewitness story of how our world began.

[4:47] Now, who was the only eyewitness to how the world began? God. Or the Godhead. Right?

[4:57] God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. There was only one eyewitness at the beginning. And it wasn't us. There weren't any human beings there at the beginning.

[5:12] Genesis 1. Every single story, every single account, teaching, and truth in the Bible rests on the firm foundation of Genesis 1, verse 1.

[5:27] Do you believe that? Many people, if not most, call this story of beginnings fantasy.

[5:40] Far-fetched. Even fiction. God calls it fact. By presenting it to us as his truth for the foundation of everything.

[5:52] With the opening of chapter 1, verse 1 in the Bible, the stakes are already very, very high.

[6:02] What do I mean? Get it wrong in Genesis 1, verse 1. And that wrong will compound in what you read and believe about the rest of Scripture and what you believe about your life.

[6:20] You either stand on the foundation for everything in Genesis 1, verse 1, or you stand on lies.

[6:31] And you build your life on a lie. It is that straightforward. And it's presented that way in Scripture. Why is it true that if you get it wrong here, you will base your life on a lie?

[6:49] Because this verse is the foundation for everything that you and I know and believe when it comes to our Christian faith.

[7:00] As we try to make sense of our world. As we try to make sense of what happens to us in life. The ways that we struggle.

[7:12] The trials that we endure. Remember the inexplicable things that come into our life. As we pray for our sister Kathy. Her dad's out mowing the grass on a lawnmower.

[7:26] And it bursts into flames. And he's in the hospital needing surgery. How do we make sense of stuff like that? Why does stuff? Well, it's just a happenstance. Just an accident.

[7:38] Just bad luck. Can I read the verse again? In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. There's nothing about chance or luck or random in that verse.

[7:51] Our life is not about random. It's not about chance. And it's not about luck. It's about design. Even when you're on a lawnmower and it bursts into flame and you end up in the hospital.

[8:03] The Christian faith teaches us that. Scripture teaches us that truth. You abandon Genesis 1-1 and you abandon the foundation for everything. Everything.

[8:16] So again, I say the stakes are really, really high. Now, I'm privileged by faith in God and I'm mandated by fidelity to his word, to his truth.

[8:26] To preach and teach this story is literal fact. Just as God wrote it and in the order that he arranged it in Scripture. And I intend to do that. I'm charged with, hear me now, I'm charged with retelling this story and not reinterpreting it.

[8:45] To fit our modern notions of what did or did not happen. The fact is, we weren't there. But God was. So when it comes to what they say about beginnings and what God says, I'm going to choose the Lord.

[9:01] I'm going to stand with who was there. Not with the people who make assumptions and weren't there. We'll talk more about that as we move through this. There's so much that could be said and has been said about this account of beginnings.

[9:18] And I realize that. There are so many things that we come to this text with. You guys have read. Most of you have read this text and reread it. Most of you have read all kinds of literature that bear on the issues that come out of this teaching.

[9:34] This narrative about the beginning of all things. My primary aim is to preach the truth as it is written. Now, this is what it means, what I'm talking about.

[9:48] I'm not going to bog us down in extra material about many of the subjects being attacked within the creation narrative. However, I will at times address some issues that bear heavily on our understanding of these passages.

[10:06] And I'll use reliable sources. What does that mean? Well, I'll use authors who have written from the deep conviction that these verses are God's word on beginnings.

[10:18] And they are to be understood literally unless the context demands otherwise. I'm not going to do weird gymnastics with the text and allegorize it. And I'm not going to try to fit in millions of years between verse one, verse two, verse four, verse eight.

[10:35] I'm not going to do that. We're going to take God's word as it's written. And we're going to believe in faith that as it's written and as God testifies, that's exactly the way it went.

[10:46] Didn't we do that in first Peter? Didn't we do it in second Peter and in Ecclesiastes? Don't we do it in the Gospels? Well, why would we do it any differently here?

[10:59] Well, I want to put Genesis in perspective for us as we move into what I'm going to actually preach about one one. But I have to say some things first that help establish us in a perspective of what this book is all about.

[11:13] So let's begin with this particular question. Why teach Genesis to modern believers? Why teach Genesis to modern believers? You might say, well, why teach any book of the Bible to modern believers?

[11:25] Well, while there are issues in other books of the Bible that people actually take issue with and try to say different things, like there are people who take the Gospels and factor out all the miracles of Jesus so that literally there's a group of scholars who have basically come to the idea that 95% of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John is myth.

[11:49] So that 5% can be taken as truth. And they call themselves scholars. There are things like that. There are issues like that.

[11:59] But I don't know that there's any other book of the Bible or any other chapter of the Bible that has been more attacked by the world than Genesis chapter one. So we need to put this in perspective.

[12:14] Here's the answer that I'm going to offer to the question. The foundational answer I'll give is that Genesis helps us have the mind of Christ on origins. We talk about modern origins, the origins of the world, the nations, the people of Israel that we were grafted into.

[12:32] The Bible in Genesis chapter one and moving into two and then throughout the book details this issue of our origins. In fact, the first Hebrew word in Genesis one one means in the beginning.

[12:49] That's where the title for Genesis comes from, from the very first Hebrew word, which means in the beginning. The title Genesis is a transliteration of the Greek, the Greek word for origins or the word that can mean source or creation or even generations.

[13:13] Henry Morris is someone that I will probably end up quoting on a number of occasions as we move through these initial chapters of Genesis.

[13:24] He's a wonderful commentator. He's he's deceased now, but did so much good work as a Christian scientist and a commentator, a theologian.

[13:34] He lists 14 examples of how Genesis introduces us to the origins of the basic entities of the universe and of life.

[13:46] Let me give you a few example of these basic entities of the universe and life. One would be the beginnings of the universe. Another would be the beginnings of order and complexity.

[14:01] Where did order come from? Where did complexity come from? What about the origins of man? How did man begin? Where did we come from? What about marriage?

[14:13] Who invented it? Where did it come from? How did that ever come about? What about evil? Where's evil come from? Language, government, just to name a few.

[14:25] Genesis deals with all of that and tells us how all of that came about and began. And grounds us in that truth. This book roots our faith in the truth of our origins and in the promises of God for our sanctification, both now and for all eternity.

[14:44] Sanctification means our holiness, our set apartness to God in Christ Jesus. Genesis roots our set apartness to God in our faith in Christ, roots all of that in our origins.

[14:58] It's a fascinating story, reality, and study. I can say it this way, in fact. As Dr. Jonathan Sarfati has pointed out in his commentary, If we can't trust the history in Genesis, how can we trust God's future promises?

[15:18] End quote. If you and I cannot stand on what God has said in Genesis 1-1, how can we trust anything else, he says, in all the rest of Scripture?

[15:31] Was he there at the beginning? Did he create? Did he create the heavens and the earth? In the way that he says? In the time frame that he says?

[15:41] All the foundational doctrines and morality of the Christian faith are found in the book of Genesis.

[15:55] All Christian belief is rooted in and upon the teachings of Genesis. Genesis is our beginning. Genesis is your story and my story.

[16:07] And even though they discount it and want to do all kinds of crazy things with it, Genesis is the story of every human being's origins.

[16:19] Genesis answers the basic life questions that any and most of us are going to ask at some point in our life. Why am I here? Where did I come from?

[16:32] What's my purpose? Genesis? Genesis answers those questions. And if you look closely enough, the first chapter, the first verse in the first book answers all of that for us.

[16:47] In two words. God created. You. God created. The heavens.

[16:59] God created. The earth. God created. That's the beginning of everything. It's important for our understanding of Genesis to place it in its context within the whole of Scripture.

[17:18] We're not just going to lift all this stuff out and make it stand on its own as if there aren't 65 other books in the Bible. And many, many, many other chapters in the Bible.

[17:28] So where does Genesis fit in the context of the whole of Scripture? All right. Let me show you a few things that you need to kind of hold on to, maybe make notes for. Genesis is the first book of the Pentateuch.

[17:44] Penta. Penta is the Greek word for five. And Tukos or Tukos means scroll or book. So the first five scrolls or books of the Bible, Genesis through Deuteronomy, form a consecutive whole building on one another as each book picks up where the previous book left off.

[18:07] And so the first five books of the Bible have been known as the Pentateuch, the five scrolls. They were all one entity at one time. We've divided them up into five separate books.

[18:19] But for the Jews, the Hebrews, it was one conformed unity. And it moved through in a continuity so that where one book would stop, the next would pick up in the story.

[18:31] Genesis is the first book of those five books that go together. It's very interesting to me. The Pentateuch.

[18:44] Have I gotten to the Torah? Let me do that. Hold on. Let me see me. Well, there's one that I that skipped on me.

[18:55] Let me do the Torah. The Pentateuch of which Genesis is the first book forms what the Hebrews called the Torah or the law of Moses. The slide that I was talking about before this one, for some reason, it didn't come up every once in a while.

[19:10] We'll have a glitch like that. But the Torah, the Torah is what the Jews or the Hebrews called those first five books. Another thing that they called it. Another way they referred to those five books was the law of Moses or the book of Moses.

[19:25] Notice, not plural, the book of Moses, all five of them together. Eleven Old Testament books and five New Testament books affirm Moses as the author of the law of Moses, the first five books of the Bible.

[19:42] In all four Gospels, Jesus himself cites Moses as the author of the law of Moses, the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible.

[19:52] So these five books trace the history of mankind and then focus on God's choice of and early dealings with the Hebrew people.

[20:02] But that's not the way it starts. The first chapter of Genesis doesn't start with the Hebrew people, does it? Who does it start with? It starts with us.

[20:13] Where did we come from? How did we get here? What did God do to bring us about? To bring all of this about? How did all of this happen?

[20:27] Now, let me ask another question in this. How important is Genesis as the first book of the law of Moses to our faith in Jesus Christ?

[20:40] We want to deal with that at the outset as well. What does this, if anything, have to do with you and I and our faith walk with the Lord Jesus Christ? I mean, Jeff, we got a long way to go in many books of the Bible before we get to Matthew.

[20:56] And we're introduced to the Lord Jesus and told about his life and see him go to the cross and be resurrected. There's a whole bunch of history that's going to happen until we get there.

[21:06] We're way back in the first of the first of the first. What does any of that have to do with Jesus? Is it so far removed? No, it's not. Not at all. We need to take a close look.

[21:18] In one of the instances when Jesus appeared to his disciples after his resurrection, he told them something fascinating to me. Look at this. These are my words, which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things which are written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled.

[21:44] All that is written about me in the first five books of the Bible, to include Genesis, must be fulfilled. And so I asked this.

[21:55] How important is Genesis as part of Moses's writings? Well, Jesus warned his rivals, those unbelieving and hostile Jewish religious leaders that were always following him around and dogging him out.

[22:11] Jesus had this to say to them. Do not think that I will accuse you before the father. The one who accuses you is Moses. What? In whom you have set your hope.

[22:24] For if you believed Moses, that is the first five books of the Bible, you would believe me for he wrote about me.

[22:35] But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words? There's the issue. That's the issue. And that's the issue that you and I face right now this morning.

[22:45] Am I going to read Genesis one and really believe that God did what he says he did in six literal 24 hour days? Or do I have to shove millions of years in there because so-called pseudoscience tells me that it took billions of years for us to get here?

[23:02] Well, I could really go off on this. I got to get back over here behind the pulpit. We're going to get that. We're going to get there. It is amazing to me to think about God as he reveals himself in Scripture and have a problem with that God speaking into existence.

[23:20] All that he did in six days. I mean, he could have done it in six seconds. Right? Or six milliseconds. Nothing's too big for God. We struggle with six 24 hour days.

[23:33] For heaven's sake, he could have done it in a millisecond. In one. This is our God. And we need to know this God and trust this God and believe this God.

[23:47] The other, the remainder, the other human authors of Scripture knew how vital Genesis is to the foundation of our faith in Jesus Christ. Listen to this quote.

[23:59] No other book of the Bible is quoted as copiously or referred to so frequently in other books of the Bible as is Genesis.

[24:11] That's Henry Morris. The New Testament has more than 200 references to Genesis. And roughly 100 of those 200 references are quotes or direct references to material in the first 11 chapters alone.

[24:31] Half of the New Testament references to Genesis deal with the first 11 chapters. Every single New Testament writer refers somewhere in his book to the first 11 chapters of Genesis.

[24:48] Every one of them. Genesis chapters 1 through 11 cover about 2,000 years of history.

[25:03] Wow. Genesis chapters 12 through 50 cover a little less than 300 years. So that's about 2,300 years of origins from Genesis alone. The 2,300 years Genesis records covers more human history than all other 65 books of the Bible put together.

[25:22] The remaining four books of the Pentateuch, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy combined cover a little less than 500 years of human history.

[25:34] No other book of the Bible or any other books of the Bible combined cover as much human history as Genesis does. The original audience. The original audience. Who were the original recipients?

[25:47] Who were the original readers of the book of Genesis? Who was Genesis written for originally? The original audience were the Hebrews of the Exodus generation.

[25:59] Conservative scholarship puts the time of the writing of the Pentateuch, those first five books of the Bible, at around 1445 B.C. Now that's about the same time of the 40 years of wilderness wanderings in the life of Israel.

[26:16] Do you remember that? Most of you know about the wilderness wanderings. God told the children of Israel to go into the promised land, cross the river, go into the promised land.

[26:26] And there were a group of people in Israel that whined and moaned and complained. They're too big for us. They're too mighty for us. We can't know. And so God cursed those people.

[26:36] Those people were destroyed. And God said, as a result of all of this, you will wander the desert for the next 40 years until this entire generation dies out. And I'll take a new generation in to the promised land.

[26:48] That's exactly what happened. While the children of Israel wandered in the desert for 40 years, Moses wrote those first five books of the Bible for the Hebrews to root and ground them in this sovereign God.

[27:01] Why? Why would he do that? Because he wanted them to see this God who made the universe and made it in the way that we're writing down for you to read right now was the God that said, cross the Jordan and take the land.

[27:14] Nothing's too big for me. I'll help you do that. I will be your power. I will guide you. I will keep you. I will provide for you and bless you.

[27:25] And that land will become your land. That's why. These people needed that encouragement. They needed that foundation. You can trust this sovereign God.

[27:37] You can believe this big God who made this big world and this even bigger universe because he's bigger than all of that. And he can certainly take care of you.

[27:49] And take care of what's in front of you. That's a lot of history. That's a lot of activity. Moses was the author of Genesis.

[28:02] Moses wrote Genesis to establish the people in God's sovereignty for choosing to covenant with them, to deliver them and protect them.

[28:14] And he promised to bless them then with land and many descendants and with his ongoing promises that he will be their God and they will be his people.

[28:26] The people needed to hear this account of this great big God doing a great big thing and look to him and trust him. Now, in terms of God's even greater promise. What is that? His even greater promise to redeem humanity from the curse of sin, which is marked out.

[28:43] And if you'll turn to Genesis 3. God willing, we will get there. And if I go to be with the Lord and I can't finish it, I'll just charge Greg to just jump in wherever I left off and keep on moving.

[28:58] Keep on going. Genesis 3.15 is the first mention of the gospel and the hope that God will overcome what sin has broken. And I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed.

[29:12] He shall bruise you on the head and you shall bruise him on the heel. This is the first mention of what we have come to know about the Messiah, the deliverer. The one who will crush or deal a death blow to sin and Satan.

[29:27] That is the redemption of humanity marked out in Genesis early on. We see that this is God's first mention of the gospel of Christ.

[29:37] So Genesis introduces you and I to this covenant making, covenant keeping, redeeming God who created all things. So redemption is not too much for God.

[29:51] Helping you and I overcome what has overwhelmed us. It's not too much for God to kill what has killed us and bring us to new life.

[30:02] Because this is the God who made the universe. This is the God who spoke beginning into existence. This is the eternal God who always is and was and will be forevermore.

[30:16] This is that God. Our redeeming Lord. Commentator again, Henry Morris, sums up the first verse of Genesis. Genesis this way. I wanted you to see this.

[30:27] It is vitally important if we would ever really fully understand anything in the Bible or in the world in general, that we first understand the teaching of Genesis 1.1.

[30:43] You know, I'm of a mind as I think about this, that when we encounter people who come to know Christ and they are initially saved, they're born again, they're fresh now in the Lord, they're infants in Jesus, as it were, and need to grow up.

[31:00] We need to take them to Genesis 1.1 and root their faith in Genesis 1.1. We need to tell them about the beginning of everything. The foundation for everything is this creating God who made them and created redemption for them and saved them and let God be big to them.

[31:21] So, my friends, to begin at the beginning, to begin at the beginning, Moses provides us with three biblical certainties forming the foundation for everything.

[31:36] The first certainty and the foundation for everything identifies the creator. God created. Now, this is the critical truth of the Bible.

[31:49] This is the true beginning of everything. And here, at the beginning, we encounter the truth that you and I were made. We were created. We are a part of what God made.

[32:03] We're not all that God made, but we are a part of what God made, a critical part. We are confronted right away with God. In the beginning, God.

[32:18] He is the great designer. He is the architect of this world, his world, and all it contains. Friends, friends, in one way, we can say it like this.

[32:31] God is. God is. No matter what the world says, God is. And that changes everything.

[32:45] That is the material truth of primitive history. In all of human history, God is. And because God is, we are.

[32:57] There would be no we are if it wasn't God is. Do you see how important this is? I know you do. I know you do. I truly do.

[33:08] Or you wouldn't be here. The Bible never sets out to prove God's existence. God's existence is assumed and established as creator.

[33:19] The earth is then not our foundation for living. Creation is not our foundation for living. We are to be good stewards of what God has made, but we don't worship it.

[33:35] God's going to steward and take care of it and do with it what he wants because it's his world. We're so arrogant to think in terms that we can destroy the world. When God made the world and sustains the world and cares for the world.

[33:49] Now, again, can we mar the world? Can we make an issue with the world in ways that are detrimental to us? Absolutely. We are to be good stewards of God's world.

[34:00] We just don't need to forget this one reality. It's his world, not ours. It's his. It belongs to him. He made it. He is the creator.

[34:12] So the earth's not our foundation. Creation's not our foundation. God, the creator, is our foundation for life. I want you to notice in the text, it is not pointing us to worship creation.

[34:25] It is not pointing us to be in awe of creation in a replacement way with God. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

[34:37] And so the emphasis is on us understanding this wonderful creator, God, this almighty, majestic king of kings. God is the foundation for our life.

[34:48] We are made and sustained in life because God is. That is the foundation for everything. And so now, in the very first verse of holy scripture, humanity is challenged with a choice.

[35:04] And they hate it. I hated it at a time in my life. What is that choice? To believe in and serve this creator, almighty God, or to choose to deny him and serve idols.

[35:25] And people don't like that clear-cut choice. They hate it. Give me another choice.

[35:38] Okay. How about billions of years? Really? Yeah.

[35:50] Yeah. Yeah. Therefore, here's what happens. Given that choice, in the very first verse of the Bible, here's what happens. The unbelieving heart of men and women, filled with sinful rebellion, cannot abide this almighty creator.

[36:10] And the truth is then traded for a lie. A lie so incredibly absurd that only a heart of pure sin could ever choose to believe it over the truth of an intelligent designer.

[36:22] Billions of years of time. Billions of years of time. Not hundreds of thousands. Not millions. Billions, plural.

[36:35] Of years of time are believed to have seen a particle explode into a chemical process whereby all the complexities and intricacies of our bodies, our solar system, our solar system, our universe, and even our own planet, are then products of random forces floating around space.

[37:00] Where'd space come from? Nobody answers that. Where'd the particles come from? Nobody answered that. What made possible the chemical processes for the explosion?

[37:14] Nobody answers that. It just happened. It's chance. It's random. It came out of nowhere from nothing.

[37:25] Nothing. They write it in textbooks. They give seminars, conferences, workshops.

[37:38] They teach it to our children. Is that not the truth? Am I preaching now or am I meddling? It's the truth. You understand what I'm saying?

[37:51] A lie has been traded for the truth because men and women in their sinful hearts don't like the choice. Either believe in the creator God or believe a lie.

[38:03] Give me another choice. And if you don't, I'll invent one. And that's exactly what happened. All of what we know came about by chance and happenstance.

[38:18] There was no cause and there is no creator. And God answers back. For even though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations and their foolish heart was darkened.

[38:41] Professing to be wise, they became fools. For they exchanged the truth of God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the creator who is blessed forever.

[38:54] Amen. Now, according to Henry Morris, Elohim, the word that is used for God in this verse is in plural form, but it has a singular meaning.

[39:08] In other words, it emphasizes God as almighty or his majesty as the God distinguished from many pagan gods.

[39:20] This is what he's saying. It's in a plural form. Elohim is in a plural form because it emphasizes majesty. You can't contain God in a singular idea.

[39:32] So you have to make it a plural issue because it forces you to see the majesty of this non-containable, can't put him in my box, God.

[39:45] But he has a singular purpose. He's not wishy-washy. He's not capricious. He is almighty, majestic creator.

[40:07] Look at this in scripture. Before the mountains were born or you gave birth to the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, you are God.

[40:18] The heavens are yours. The earth also is yours. The world and all it contains.

[40:30] You have founded them. By faith, we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God so that what is seen was not made out of things which were visible.

[40:44] Wow. God has no beginning and therefore he has no cause and no end. What caused God?

[40:55] Nothing. Where did he come from? God is. That's your answer. We don't like it. Until we're saved. Until we're born again and given new hearts and we can look at faith, at the truth and say, wow.

[41:11] I can't put this God in a box. I can't get my mind around everything that this God is and has done. But this I know. But this I know.

[41:24] Jesus saves. Jesus saves. God sent his only begotten son. Because he loved. We can know those things.

[41:37] It's so crazy how we just blow by all of that wonderful truth. Because we refuse to get our minds around six 24 hour days of a great big sovereign God creating everything we know.

[41:52] And so we have to help him out. If we even want to believe in him, we have to help him out. And we have to give him billions of years to do it. Sad. Tragic.

[42:08] He is. He is eternal. God is eternal. He is the maker of beginnings and endings. And he sustains everything in between. Amen. Amen. Amen. Do you understand what I just said?

[42:21] That there was no such thing as a beginning until God made one. Got that? That's your God. He's the one that made it possible to write in the beginning.

[42:36] There was no such thing before he spoke. Because he has no beginning. And no end. God lived in eternity past.

[42:51] You can't do that in your head, can you? I can't either. Neither can they. So they have to invent something they can get their minds around.

[43:03] Billions of years. I think I listen to that and go, how do you even do that? I'm watching this place decay around me.

[43:15] I'm watching you decay. I'm watching me. I look in the mirror and think, wow, really? That was fast. Billions of years? Give me a break.

[43:26] Here then. Here then is your almighty God.

[43:41] Your king. Your creator. Your God. Majestic.

[43:54] All wise. Infinitely intelligent. The designer. The founder. Of everything. God created.

[44:08] Created reflects the application of his omniscience. My brother is going to cover, God willing, omniscience Wednesday night. We're going to talk about that, right? Omniscience, omnipotence, and omnipresence.

[44:22] You've already covered omnipotence. Okay. Let me say that again so that you can grasp this and get your mind around it with me. Because the scripture is written for us to understand.

[44:36] There are many things we might not be able to reach out and put our minds completely around. But God wrote this so that we could understand what we need to know about him as creator. So let me say this again.

[44:47] The word created. God created in the Hebrew here reflects the application of God's omniscience. His infinite wisdom in knowing all things.

[44:59] The fact that God was able to create in this manner reflects his all-knowing, all-wise, awesome intelligence. He was able to do this because God is infinitely intelligent.

[45:17] We will plan to talk more about this subject next time. But let me show you this. God's creative activity was from nothing to something.

[45:31] From nothing to something or ex nihilo. Have you guys heard the ex nihilo phrase before? All right. Okay. It just means from nothing.

[45:44] From nothing. So God created from nothing. You've heard the joke about being able to make something like God did.

[45:54] And so everybody gets their stuff and gets ready to form what they're going to make. And we're going to show God that we can make something too. And they start with dirt.

[46:05] And God says, get your own dirt. That's right. Get your own dirt. Make your own stuff. God made the stuff. There was no stuff.

[46:17] There was nothing. And so God had to make the stuff to make you. And he did that. Ex nihilo. There was nothing visible.

[46:30] You saw that in a previous verse. There was nothing. And God made something. From nothing. We need to let God get big, don't we?

[46:44] Scripture shows us a great big God. God created. The entire universe bears the marks of a designed and fashioned system.

[46:56] Amen? A system. Now, the question is this. What were the forces or force behind this creative masterpiece? Whose mind thought of these intricacies?

[47:09] And from whence came the power to put it all in motion? Answer? God created. Amen. God created. We're given the answer in our unbelief and in rebellion and the sin of our heart.

[47:22] We just don't like the answer we're given. It takes the blood of Jesus Christ shed on the cross of glory to bring us to the place where we can read this in faith and say, Aha!

[47:36] God, the creator. My creator. All praise and glory be to him. The first verse of the Bible allows for no evolutionary process.

[47:47] The remainder of creation account puts an exclamation point on God's instantaneous creative power. He didn't need all that time. He didn't need all that time.

[47:59] He didn't need six days. It pleased him to give us six days of creation because that's what he based the cycle of life on for us. He didn't need that.

[48:11] We did. Let me give you real quickly the second biblical certainty here. Look at this one. The second biblical certainty is the creation. In the beginning, God created.

[48:22] God created the heavens and the earth. The second biblical certainty forming the foundation for everything labels the creation for us.

[48:33] Labels it as what? The heavens and the earth. Folks, what a marvel our world is. Boy, if you do like I do and you watch the documentaries on TV, you just have to blow past all the billions of years and stuff, they say.

[48:47] But they show you the world and some of the intricacies of the world, and you just marvel and wonder how in the world can they see something like that? How in the world can they watch a butterfly and think that that happened randomly?

[49:02] What a wonder our universe is. The very names, think of this, the very names that we use to describe what we see and inhabit come from its creator.

[49:16] Who gave the names? God did. He called it the heavens. He called it the earth. That's him. He did that. And he led Moses to pin those names for what he made.

[49:33] The names encompass all of what we know as our universe. The heavens and the earth take in all that we know and then beyond. There's much we don't know and beyond.

[49:45] When Isaiah wrote of God sending his chosen one, Jesus, the Messiah, to deliver his people, he included this about this saving, delivering, redeeming God who is our creator.

[50:01] He included this. Isaiah said, The idea is since this sovereign creating God can do this, he then can also make good on his promises to send his chosen one, in whom his soul delights to rescue his people from their sins.

[50:32] If God can't make the world in the way he says it in this book, then we can't believe what he said about sending his son. And dying on a cross to purchase us away from sin.

[50:44] Is that straightforward? Look at this verse. For thus says the Lord who created the heavens. He is the God who formed the earth and made it.

[50:56] He established it and did not create it a waste place, but formed it to be inhabited. I am the Lord and there is none else. That's said right on the heels of him being displayed as creator.

[51:09] Worthy are you, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power. Why?

[51:19] For you created all things. And because of your will, they existed and were created. By the will of God, they were made. Isn't that what it says?

[51:31] Friends, we cannot separate our praise and honor of God from God being the creator of all things. We can't.

[51:42] We have to take him as creator as much as we take him as savior or Lord or king. We give glory to God because he is creator of everything.

[51:57] We are the creation bowing down to worship our creator. We deem God worthy to receive our worship as our creator God, the almighty and majestic one.

[52:09] Friends, all other explanations for the heavens and the earth are satanic attempts to denounce God as creator and rob God of the praise and honor his creation owes to him.

[52:22] That's what's at stake. This is not a matter of splitting hairs. This is not a matter of trying to allow science into the Bible to shore up the Bible and give us an even stronger message to present to people.

[52:40] No. The idea of the evolutionary process is a way of supplanting the glory of God as creator and robbing him of the praise and glory we would give to him as the creator and designer of everything in the way that he says.

[52:58] The very way that God describes how he did it. Awes us. Does it not? Why would I want to stick billions of years in there and rob God of the awe that I would give to him as this magnificent creator who simply spoke and it happened?

[53:14] He didn't wave a wand. He didn't take a bunch of stuff and do this and then paint the eyes on it. He just said, be. And there it is.

[53:27] Be. And there it is. It obeyed. Because creator God spoke. Man.

[53:41] I want to worship a God like that. I want to honor a God like that. I want to honor the God of this cross. So we're talking about empty, futile, non-answers to the questions of origins.

[54:01] They are ludicrous and satanic in what they purport to be the highest reasonings of man about the heavens and the earth. But they fail. They fail to believe and submit to the creator of the heavens and the earth.

[54:15] And in so doing, they show themselves enemies of the cross of Christ. That's what Paul said. Their appetite for self-exaltation is their shame.

[54:27] They are proud of what they should be ashamed of. They are blinded by the God of this world from seeing the danger of their delusion. The heavens and the earth are the handiwork of almighty God.

[54:42] Now, because I'll do more within the beginning next time, I'll be a little briefer with certainty number three as I move to a close here. Certainty number three deals with the chronology in the beginning.

[54:54] God created. The creation is the heavens and the earth. And now we deal with the time, the chronology. Remember, God made a chronology.

[55:06] There was no in the beginning. There was no time. There was no space before the Lord spoke it into existence. The primary point to be made here is that God has no beginning or end.

[55:20] He established a beginning for us. Not for him. For us. Because if he hadn't, we wouldn't be here. We had to begin somewhere.

[55:33] Because we weren't. So God spoke us into existence. Breathed life into us. In other words, friends, we owe God everything as our creator who made a beginning for the foundation for everything.

[55:49] Isn't that what we don't like in our sin? We don't like knowing that God is our creator and so that we have to answer to him. There is an authority over us that is higher than us.

[56:04] God created space and time. Matter. God is. That's not the case with the heavens and the earth.

[56:14] They had to be brought into existence in a point in time and space by this almighty God who actually transcends time and space. He is in excellence beyond time and space.

[56:29] In the beginning. We were not there at the beginning until God made us to be there after he had made the world for us to inhabit.

[56:42] Then we came along. After he did all this, then we came along. No one was there but God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

[56:52] The Godhead who fashioned the heavens and the earth. God is the witness. Now, one crucial truth about this is that you and I and no one else can scientifically prove the origins of the heavens and the earth.

[57:11] That cannot be done. You understand why? That's why we call it pseudoscience. No one was there. It's impossible to reproduce or even to deduce the factors of human origins.

[57:26] It is impossible because there is no scientific way to verify our assumptions. So they remain just that. Assumptions. You with me? Any science, any true science begins with a hypothesis.

[57:42] A question. I want to explore to see if thus and thus is so. So I set up my system in order to be able to reproduce this so that somebody then could come behind me and do the exact same thing and get the exact same results.

[57:56] That's science. How do we do that when we make assumptions about how everything began but we can't go back and prove if we're right or wrong?

[58:07] We can't. It's not science. Well, then what is it? If it's not science, what is it? It's a religion. He's been reading. He's been reading ahead.

[58:20] Listen to this. To believe that our beginnings are anything other than what the only eyewitness says they are is to believe a lie. Believing in evolution is a faith response to a series of lies which contradict God's eyewitness testimony of the beginning of all things.

[58:42] So I agree with Ken Ham, another man who's written extensively on this issue. Evolutionary teaching is not a theory and it is not a scientific fact.

[58:54] It is a faith response. Darwinian evolutionary teaching is based in the worship of false gods and false doctrine. Now I'm on record. I don't have any problem saying that because that's what God's word says.

[59:09] God's word says in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and then he details how he did it. There's no evolutionary process in those six days. God spoke and it happened.

[59:22] And that's a big God. And he doesn't need any help from us. We weren't there. Let me close with this. Now just follow along and let me get this out.

[59:33] The delusion is grounded in a grand deception which is effectively and cunningly replaced. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth with.

[59:47] In the beginning nothing became something. Which took billions of years of random changes. Which somehow by chance eventually came together to form increasingly complex designs.

[59:59] Which then brought about just the right conditions to form muck. And from this primordial muck we eventually became apes. And from nasty beasts we eventually evolved.

[60:10] No one really knows how into the slightly more sophisticated nasty beasts we are today. And that dear friends makes me so glad for the rest of scripture.

[60:23] Will you pray with me? Dear Father God we thank you for the truth of scripture. The truth that teaches us you are God.

[60:36] You are eternal. You have no beginning and no end. Thank you that you are this great big awesome majestic mighty creator. Who has given us hope.

[60:48] Because you have loved the world and sent your only begotten son. That whoever would believe in you. Whoever would believe in him. Whoever would come to faith.

[60:58] To trust in Jesus Christ. As their savior. Would be saved. Would know you. Would be bound up with you in heaven. And so we hear now the gospel.

[61:12] The good news that God saves us in his son Jesus Christ. Who went to the cross. And gave himself up for us as our substitute. To pay for the sins that we have committed in our lives.

[61:27] Against you and against each other. To pay the debt that we owe. To a sovereign creator in God. To take away the rebellion of our hearts.

[61:37] To redeem us. To purchase us. And to give us life in his name. Father we want to thank you. For the truth of scripture. And for this first verse.

[61:49] In the first chapter of the first book of the Bible. As we begin now a journey together. Through this marvelous book. Looking at the way that you fashioned.

[61:59] Informed everything that we know. And our place in it. Help us to know you. That we might know ourselves. And our place in your world.

[62:11]  For your glory. We pray these things in Jesus name. Amen.