In the Beginning God Created

Introduction & Review - Last week, we began an exciting adventure through the Scriptures called Bible Storying, the big picture of the Bible from Creation to Christ. Before the existence of this tiny universe in which we live, a far bigger reality already existed, an infinite & eternal God without beginning or ending exists in His home called Heaven.

God created angels who all loved and served God in a perfect environment existing outside of time and space. Of all the angels God created, the most beautiful angel of all was named Lucifer who was in charge of all the other angels.

Isaiah 40:12 tells God is so big He can hold all the waters of the universe in the hollow of His hand. This includes the massive Blue Whales that are roughly 100 feet long & weigh about 340,000 pounds…and there are b/w 10,000 & 25,000 in the world’s oceans, & all of them can be held in the hollow of God’s hand. We also learned that God has measured all of the universe with the span of His hand - tip of thumb to tip of pinky!

But a problem developed when Lucifer coveted what God had - He wanted God’s position power & authority as God & Lucifer recruited 1/3 of the angels to join him in a rebellious coupe against God.

God flicked Lucifer, also called Satan, out of Heaven with ease and peace returned to Heaven. God created a place for Satan & the rebellious angels with him called Hell. God continued to exist in harmony with Himself and the millions of still loyal angels He created serving Him faithfully.

We learned from the story last week that God is awesome, that there’s no problem or no individual bully or government bully conniving against us God can’t handle as He sees fit.

We also learned that spiritual warfare is real, unavoidable and impacts our lives daily but God has given us the tools needed to stand against Satan & his evil demons.

Story Begins - Found in Genesis 1:1-2:3, Ps. 19, Ps. 104:1-30 & principles found throughout multiple verses of Scripture.

The triune eternal God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit continued their existence in infinite perfection after Satan’s rebellion. Humans often become angry, bitter, withdrawn and depressed in the face of betrayal.

Having been betrayed a number of times in my own life or in dealing with grief and loss, I have found it hard to function, difficult to focus, losing all creative ability & inspiration for a season of time. But that didn’t happen to God!

Sometimes humans will lash out in anger when deeply hurt or when grieving a great loss but not God. God remained in complete control of Himself, His eternal home of Heaven & He controls Hell. He didn’t “fly off the handle” as they say or “lose His cool”. He didn’t curse or swear or have to say “Pardon my French.” Nope. God was perfectly happy, content & self contained, needing nothing in His glorious home called Heaven.

Make no mistake, it was a great loss to lose the Arch Angel Lucifer, the commander of all the angels of God due to his rebellion. It also grieved the heart of God, but God didn’t lose His power, might or creative ability at all! He was never in a fog of thought or inability to focus & function. Satan’s rebellion brought the end of an era but with every change, even painful & hard changes brings new opportunities.

So God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit as Master Designers when back to the proverbial drawing board. They counseled among themselves because the Bible says in Amos 3:3 “Can two walk together unless they are agreed?”

The Bible also says in Ps. 33:11 “The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of His heart to all generations.”

Sometime later the patriarch Job testified of God in 23:13 “But He is unique, and who can make Him change? And whatever His soul desires, that He does.”

An anonymous Psalmist wrote “But our God is in Heaven, He does whatever He pleases.” (Ps. 115:3)

Solomon, the second wisest person who ever lived next to Jesus Christ said two are better than one because they have a good reward for their labor & a cord with three strands is not easily broken.

So God the Father, God the Son & God the Holy Spirit went to work. When did this happen? At the beginning of time as we know it, in the beginning God created the Heavens and the Earth. Now the earth and surrounding universe didn’t have any sort of shape, and nothing was in it, it completely empty, void and nothing but darkness. God’s Holy Spirit hovered over the waters.

Then God spoke and said “Let there be light!” and immediately there was light! God turned on the lights with only the power of His voice. God saw the light and evaluated the light was good because God is good and everything He does is perfectly good. But even though God had turned on the lights, He wasn’t done creating so He divided the light from the darkness and He labeled light and darkness. He named light Day and God called the dark Night. Naming things is a mark of ownership and authority.

By creating Day & Night, God created time as we know it because the evening and the morning were the first day. We know this because God wrote it down in His journal the Bible in Genesis 1:5.

Well on Day 2, God said “Let there be a firmament in the middle of the waters, (we would understand it as an expanse of sky, a fixed dome of atmosphere above and below the waters) and instantly there was a canopy in place dividing waters from waters and it was so just like God said it should be.

It will be important to remember later that God separated water above the canopy and below the canopy so the earth was literally surrounded by water, but the earth was safe inside the canopy of water surrounding earth and the earth had it’s own atmosphere.

God also named that sky canopy heaven and concluded His work with the evening and morning being the 2nd day. Along the way, God made sure that His creative work on Day 2 was written down in His journal as well because at some point inquiring minds were going to want to know what happened in the beginning.

Day 3 arrives and the Master Planner, Designer & Architect of Creation named God spoke again and when God speaks, major stuff happens! Anyway, when God spoke on Day 3, He commanded that all the waters inside & under the canopy He made on day 2 gather in one location to let dry land appear.

Bam! Instantly the waters were collected together and dry land appears just like God said it should be. What’s really cool about that is God gave a name to the dry land: Earth. He can do that because He made it you know.

Then He gave a name to the waters He collected together: Seas! God looked at the earth and seas He had just created with approval because it was good!

I don’t know about you but I can never create something from nothing. I need raw materials like wood or leather or metal. Invariably I mess it up and have to start over. As hard as I try, it seems I tend to measure once & cut twice, instead of measuring twice & cutting once.

God doesn’t have that problem & everything He says and does by just the power of His voice is perfect - not just perfect, infinitely perfect because God is infinitely perfect!

I’m already tired thinking about all that God did so far to have dry land and seas, but since God doesn’t grow weary in doing good, He kept talking and stuff kept happening! God said let the earth bring forth grass and the most beautiful lawn you’ve ever seen - not just grass seed, real turf appeared out of nowhere. God commanded seed bearing herbs, all kinds of flowers, plants and vegetables, fruit trees that bear fruit, all unique according to their own kind, and instantly the earth had grass, plants, vegetables and fruit trees galore!

Any plant, vegetable or fruit tree you can imagine was created on Day 3 by the command of God! Everything “according to it’s kind” - a category and class of grass, plants and trees in exact detail according to the Master Planner’s grand design, just the way all three of them, Father, Son & Holy Spirit imagined it would be.

Guess what? God saw all that was good too! There was evening and morning, the 3rd day was finished!

Things are really taking shape! That formless, void, dark earth now has form, has light and darkness and is now teaming with grass, plants & trees. God made sure to record that in His journal as well.

Day 4 - You might be expecting God to do more work on earth, but instead, God in His wisdom and power began to fine tune the light. God said “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night, for signs, seasons days and years” (Gen. 1:14). “And it was so!” God made two great lights, a brighter, greater light to rule the day and a lesser light to rule the night. We know the great light for day to be our sun & the lesser light to rule the night is the moon. God also spoke and made stars also. He hung the sun, moon and stars in space to divide light and darkness.

You remember how I told you God is so big He holds the seas in the hollow of His hand from Is. 40:12? Well in that same chapter, Isaiah tells us God is also so big He named all those stars He hung in space as well! (40:26)

Those lights and their movements in the heavens regulate seasons here on earth. It shouldn’t surprise you by this point, but it should impress you that God saw it was good as day 4 came to a conclusion with the evening and morning.

I should point out that God wasn’t sleeping at night after His work for the day was complete. We learned last week that God sits above time and space. He exists outside of time and so evening & morning only mean something to Him because He made them. I should also point out that God doesn’t sleep. Psalm 121:3-4 says “He who keeps you shall not slumber, behold He who keeps Israel shall neither slumber or sleep.”

Day 5 - God spoke again, this time commanding the seas and all the waters of earth to have an abundance of fish and every kind aquatic animal you can imagine. He also commanded birds of every kind to fill the earth. All sea & sky creatures great & small From Blue Whales to little tiny hummingbirds, God spoke and they showed up!

(Slides) Last week I told you about the size of the great Blue Whale, the largest animal in God’s Created order to demonstrate how big God is. Yet what’s amazing is God is able to created the tiniest of creatures with exact detail. The smallest bird is the Bee Hummingbird which is only found on the island of Cuba.

It measures a mere 2 1/4” long. They are often mistaken for bees, hence the name.

They weigh less than 2 grams. Since you don’t know how much two grams is, a common dime of our currency is 2.268 grams.

Bee Hummingbirds are about 1/2 the weight of the hummingbirds you might see in your backyard here in the Coastal Bend.

Female Bee Hummingbirds make their nests which are barely an inch across.

Her eggs are about the size of a coffee bean.

The Bee Hummingbirds wings beat about 80 times a second, and when courting during flight, they beat up to 200 times a second! (https://www.audubon.org/news/get-know-bee-hummingbird-worlds-smallest-bird)

Both the great Blue Whale & the tiny Bee Hummingbird were created in exact size, shape and detail by the voice of God said “let there be fish in the sea & birds in the air!”

Then God blessed all the water life and all the bird life and gave them a command to be fruitful and multiply all according to their kind, their class, there species. Boom: it was so! God saw the fish and fowl and said it was good as day 5 comes to a close with the evening and morning being the 5th day.

Day 6 - Just like God filled the waters with living animals & He filled the skies with living birds, He spoke on day 6 and commanded every living animal creature to appear. Instantly cattle began roaming the grass, horses began running on the back 40 as they say, the creepy crawling insects fluttered to life. Giraffes & Zebras roamed the plains.

The earth was full of lions, tigers and bears: Oh my! Hippos began waddling down to the water for a drink. White tail deer began gracing God’s forest. Polar bears, dinosaurs, every bug & beetle, goat and sheep populated earth. Dogs, cats, and every animal perfectly created according to its kind by the command of the Creator God according to His master plan and design. God saw all those animals and called it good in His journal.

PROBLEM:

Now as wonderful & good as all of God’s Creation was & is so far by the middle of Day 6, there is one big glaring problem. All of these animals, fish, birds, grass, plants and trees operate by the instinct and the DNA God built into their life. The animals could never be trusted with authority to act on behalf of God. None of them are capable of managing God’s interests on earth. None of the fish, fowl, cattle or creeping thing could be a steward of God’s Creation on God’s behalf.

God designed and crafted each part of creation for the benefit of someone else. But something was still missing, something of such importance, of such infinite value, something even more valuable to God than the millions of angels He’d created already. There was nothing in God’s created order so far that reflects His nature, His character, His intellect, His wisdom, creativity, and most importantly His family.

God wanted a beneficiary to enjoy and take care of all that He has created. Remember God doesn’t need anything, He is self-contained and self-content. God was pleased with everything so far, but He’s not done yet!

RISING TENSION:

God makes the most profound, most mind blowing command of all His decrees so far in His creative work.

CLIMAX:

God said “Let us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness, let them have dominion or rule over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth. So God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him, male & female He created them.” Gen. 1:26-27.

God said let us, make man in our image…All the members of the Godhead, Father, Son & Holy Spirit were involved in Creation.

God inspired the Apostle John to identify Jesus as the Word of God in John 1:1-3 “1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.”

What that means is Jesus was the voice of God speaking the universe into existence and as the Living Word of God, He would become flesh and dwell among men in God’s time.

God pronounced a blessing on the male & female too and said: “Be fruitful & multiply; fill the earth and subdue it, keep it under control. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, & over every living thing that moves on the earth.” Gen. 1:28.

To have dominion over means rule, control over. God gave mankind the responsibility of ruling over His Creation & to represent His interests here on Earth. By the way, all these plants and fruit bearing trees are for you to eat. I’ve given the animals these plants to eat as well.

SOLUTION:

God looked across the universe, the earth, the sky, the sun moon and stars in their courses above, the grass, plants and trees, the seas and all it’s wildlife, the sky & all those birds, the earth and all it’s wildlife, and the male and female He created by the power of His voice alone. And God saw that it was very, good!

And just like that, the evening & morning concluded the 6th Day. In this way, God finished all His creation!

PEACE RETURNS TO VILLAGE:

Day 7 - There was one final thing God did on day 7 and He saw fit to record it for us in His Divine journal. He did this for our benefit and to set an example for us to follow. He embedded into the rhythm of the universe a pattern of rest. God rested on the 7th day, a sure sign He finished what He started & enjoyed His Creative work. I mentioned earlier God doesn’t sleep or slumber.

In Isaiah 40:28, the prophet reminds us “The everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, neither faints nor is weary. His understanding is unsearchable.”

So God rested signifying His work was perfect, complete and for our benefit. God blessed & sanctified the 7th day - set it apart as a special day to reflect on God & His greatness.

SET UP FOR NEXT TIME

Next time, I’ll share more details about the male and female God made and His plans for them and His relationship with them.

Review: Study Guide note slides:

Day 1 God Created: Light

Day 2 God Created: Atmosphere

Day 3 God Created: Earth, Plants & Trees

Day 4 God Created: Sun, Moon & Stars

Day 5 God Created: Fish & Fowl

Day 6 God Created: Animals & Man

Day 7 God Rested

II. EXPLAIN HOW THIS FITS INTO BIG PICTURE OF THE BIBLE - Key concepts from this story.

[Transition:] But for now, let’s think about what this means for the story of the Bible and the big picture of the Bible.

(Slides)

1. The battle for the beginning, an understanding of our origins is critical to shaping your world view.

Remember I said last week, the fallen angel, Lucifer, aka Satan, has one goal, to kill, to steal and to destroy. He wanted to be God. Since he can’t be God, he wants to steal glory from God by convincing us that God doesn’t exist.

The deep divide in our country & culture boils down to a fundamental view of Creation, human origin, authority & control. If you know there is a God, you’ll see life with purpose and meaning & accountability. If you don’t believe there is a God, then you believe you are free to do whatever you want because life has no value, purpose or meaning so eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die.

2. Creation testifies of a Creator. Intelligent design indicates and testifies of an Intelligent Creator. The Creator has authority & ownership of His Creation and His Creation, all parts of it are accountable to God.

Ps. 19:1-3 “1 The heavens declare the glory of God; And the firmament shows His handiwork. 2 Day unto day utters speech, And night unto night reveals knowledge. 3 There is no speech nor language Where their voice is not heard.”

(Turn & Read Rom. 1:18-20).

3. Acceptance or rejection of God’s account of Creation is purely a matter of faith & deliberate choice.

So in the big picture of the Bible, accepting “In the beginning God” by faith is a critical decision you must make.

Hebrews 11:3 “By faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.”

Rom. 1:21-23 “because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23 and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things... 28 “And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting;”

It is vital, critical, life altering, literally a matter of life & death that you accept by faith the first 5 Words of God’s journal the Bible: “In the beginning God Created...”

III. GIVE 2-3 IDEAS/APPLICATION POINTS FOR HOW THIS APPLIES TO US TODAY/IMMEDIATELY

Life Lessons from this story:

1. God alone is all-powerful as only God can create out of nothing by His spoken Word.

2. God is the Master Designer & His intelligent design reveals His absolute power, glory, splendor, majesty, wisdom & authority over all creation.

3. God’s creation reveals He is a God of law & order & nothing in creation happened by chance. God doesn’t do “random."

4. God is the author of all life but only human life is created in the image of God & that makes all human life of infinite value.

If there is no God, then life has no value, no purpose & no meaning which is why people treat life as cheap & something we can discard when life isn’t convenient. But if there is a God and there is, then all life has value, purpose & meaning given to it by God.

One final question, how do we know human life is of infinite value? Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

If you don’t have a personal relationship by faith with your Creator God, He wants you to know that you can by embracing Jesus Christ by faith. Jesus, the Word of God, the voice of God who spoke Creation into being, gave His life so you could be adopted into God’s family. Share the ABC’s. I’d like to continue the conversation with you about your relationship with Christ.

Pray