In the Beginning

Background

If we have not had the pleasure of meeting my name is John Colunga and I have the privilige of serving as lead pastor here at New Day Pasadena

I also have the privilige of bringing this weeks sermon

So if you have your Bibles, plese turn to Genesis chapter 1

We are starting a new sermon series and we will be going through six key accounts in the book of Genesis

Today, we are starting at the beginning

The Creation of the World

If you are visiting with us, you have joined us on a bit of an abnoral Sunday

Usually we have part of chapter as our text, and today we are going to read through two chapters

I started planning todays sermon and was going to give a summary of chapter one and then only read chapter 2

However, I was realizing that my summary would take just as long as it would be to actually read it

And I think everybody here would agree that God’s words are greater than my words and so we are going to abnormally use and read through the first two chapters of Genesis

What we also like to do is to stand for the reading of God’s word, and having an abnormally long text might make this a bit difficult for you, so if you have trouble standing please feel free to remain seated or if you find that you do need to sit down in the middle of the reading, please feel free to do so

But I do ask that all who are able to stand, to please do so now, and follow along as I read God’s word

1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. 3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. 6 And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” 7 And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. 8 And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day. 9 And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. 11 And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so. 12 The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening and there was morning, the third day. 14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. 16 And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. 17 And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, 18 to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day. 20 And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.” 21 So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” 23 And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day. 24 And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. 25 And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” 29 And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. 31 And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

The Seventh Day, God Rests

2 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2 And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. 3 So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation. 4 These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens. 5 When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, 6 and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground— 7 then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. 8 And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. 9 And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 10 A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. 11 The name of the first is the Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. 12 And the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. 13 The name of the second river is the Gihon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Cush. 14 And the name of the third river is the Tigris, which flows east of Assyria. And the fourth river is the Euphrates. 15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” 18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” 19 Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. 20 The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. 21 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” 24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. 25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

This is the word of our Lord, you may now be seated

I believe it is a good thing that we as a church start here in Genesis

We are a church plant and we just launched as New Day Pasadena and so we are in the beginning stages of this

And as we start, I believe it is very fitting to lay a foundation of what we believe as it realates to God and the beginning

And someone new or someone visiting may be asking the same question

Where do our beliefs and standards stem from

And of course, as we just read, we believe that scripture is God breathed

That it is God’s word for us to live by

That it is alive and active in our life

And that it is truth

And what we just read is the beginning of the earth, the beginning of mankind

What we just read is God’s intent, God’s design, God’s will for us

We will never be able to comprehend that in the beginning was God

That God has always been, he was never created or born, he has always been

But what we can comprehend is that God is the author and creator of life

And so in the beginning we find that in six days God created the world

We wont get into if that was a six days over a period of time or if it was a literal six days

I will say that I do believe in the literal six days but I want to focus on is that

As we read over and over again, God looked at his creation and said “it is good”

“It is Good”

God’s intent is good, God’s design is good, God’s will is good, and God himself is good

God’s Intent is Good

One of the main objections to God is that he cant be a loving God because he allows evil in the world

And the overarching question in that is why do bad things happen to good people?

And when these two things are put together, it is used as an attack to blame God

And because people do not like a “God” that from their perspective (brings in evil, allows it, and hasn’t destoyed it)

They assume that God cant really be a God of love, or good

They immediately want to dismiss or deny his existence altogether

One of the things I have to be careful not to do is to dismiss or overlook these questions

Even as a believers, there are times when we want to question or blame God

If you have never been angry or questioned God, I should hang out with you more

In our humaness, in our imperfection, we cant see or fully understand why God allows some things to happen

And so bad things happen to us, our families, people we love,

We go through trials of all kind and again we dont see the full picture and so we get angry and have questions

Some of you may remember that I did a funeral for little Madilyn Mims (2 years old and she had an accident, fell in the pool and drowned)

Wht you may not know is that it was the first funeral I had ever done.

There is nothing like something tragic like that to happen to make you ask some questions

Why Lord!?!? You bet there were many questions, confusion

The funerals I have done since, have been hard, but they have been nothing like that first one

The sadness of tragedy, the loss of a beautiful little girl

That is enough to make any human question

And so why is it that when non-believers question the existence or goodness of God, based on their own tragedy and circumstances without God, that many times we as believers, our response is well you just need to have faith

Or, we try to just hand them a gospel tract

When in reality, the first thing we need to do is sympathize with them

We, even as believers, should be able to sympathize with others when this objection to God comes up

This is the second characteristic mentioned in our vision this year to grow

First it’s unity of mind and then its sympathy

Yes we need to have sympathy with each other but we also need to have sympathy with those who are outside of these walls in a hurting world

And the world is going to have sympathy purely out of emotions while your sympathy should come from a place of truth and goodness

Because the truth and goodness we cling to is not from within us, but is from God

So what we need to remember - That God is good, his intent is good

When we read the creation account, there is nothing about it that is bad

There is nothing about it where God says, there needs to be sickness, there needs to be death,

What we know is that God cannot sin nor can he be the author of sin

Rather, God himself is good, perfect, righteous, and holy

So His intent, his purpose for his creation, is to be good as well!

We seee this over and over again that “God saw that it was good.”

And as a matter of fact the one thing that God saw that was not good was that man was alone, and so he made it good by giving him woman!

And so when we question, when we doubt, when we come accross others that question, that doubt, that reject,

The easiest thing we can do is point to creation

To point to God’s creation and his purpose for it to be good

God’s Design is good

God created but he also designed

I believe it is on purpose that God did not start by creating mankind first

Rather, there was a design, a plan to get to the creation of mankind

Chapter 2:5 When no bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, 6 and a mist was going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground—

Does that not sound like God is in control?

That God is a God of order?

That God has a design, a plan in place?

And then when god is ready for man,

We have 2 accounts, Genesis 1:26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.

Genesis 2:7 then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.

God doesn’t just speak man into existence like he did everything else

Rather this was the first time that God formed something

God formed man!

And man didnt look like a cousin of the monkeys nor did man look like

Rather, man was created in the image of God, after his likeness

God’s design was for mankind to be like him

Man could never be Him but to be living in his likeness

An image bearer of the God of the universe

An image bearer of the Creator

And in God’s design, he gave dominion to man over the things that God created

And Adam is naming all of the animals and is working the land

But poor Adam looks around and sees all of the mommy and daddy elephants, and the mommy and daddy tigers

And Adam is all alone as there wasnt a suitable helper fit for him

And as we said earlier, God designed something new

God designed and created WOAHhhhh Man!!!

And Adam sees Woman and hes like Yes Lord she will do!

“This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.”

We must see, and know, and understand that God’s design is good

And as God formed and created man he created man good

There is no fault in God’s design

God’s will is Good

Next we will look and see that God’s “will” is good

It is at this point that we have noted that God has made man like him

That God has given man dominion over all of the living creatures

That man and woman are blessed to be together and multiply

And now, man is to live and work the garden - unashamed

It is God’s will that man be unashamed

expressed or acting openly and without guilt or embarrassment.

Man and woman both would live openly, without guilt, or embarrasement

They would walk with God, they would work, and in order for them to continue to walk openly, and without guilt,

They are to obey God’s one command.

Genesis 2:16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, 17 but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”

This command would seem silly but there is a reason for it

In order for man and woman to continue in unity, in relationship with God, their will had to be aligned with God’s will

God’s will is to bless his creation and to be in relationship with it

God’s will is for man to enjoy God

God’s will is for man to obey him and give him glory

And in order for that to continuously happen there had to be a command

In 1689 Baptists modified and adopted the Westminister Confession of Faith and it became the Second London Baptist Confession

From the Westminister Confession of Faith, came the Westminister Chatechism - and question #1 is “What is the chief and highest end of man?

The answer: Man’s chief end and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy Him forever.

In 1693 Benjamin Keach a baptist theologian came out with Baptist chatechism

In Keaches chatechism - #1 Who is the first and best of beings? Answer: God is the first and best of beings

#2 What is the chief end of man? Answer: Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever

God’s will for man to glorify him, to enjoy him, to submit to him as the author and creator

To recognize that God is the first and greatest of beings

He gave man a command

The command was good, the command was purposeful, the command was loving so that God and man could continue to commune together unashamed

God Himself is Good

What we find too often today is a complete misrepresentation of God and his goodness

As we will learn next week, that it is not God who messed up, it is not God who put evil in man

It is not God, who had any ill will towards man

But indeed, today, God does get assigned much if not all of the blame

His goodness is twisted, and that is why it is essential for us to believe and talk about Jesus

That while it is not God who messed up

It is God who sacrificed his only son, his perfect son, to reconcile his beloved creation back to him

God is good and God is loving

Psalm 145:8-10 “The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made. All your works shall give thanks to you, O Lord, and all your saints shall bless you!”

Psalm 103:8 “The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”

John 3:16 ““For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

Ephesians 2:8-9 “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

God’s intent, design, and will are all good because God himself is good!

And in his intent, design, and will for us to be in good standing with him, he made a way when there was no way

And one of the most understaught teachings of God is that he knew that man would stray out his will

Before he even created the world, He knew that that his own creation would reject him

And knowing this, before he said let there be light,

God knew that he would one day have to send Jesus for mankind

Jesus knew that being fully God and fully man, only He could pay the price and be the atonement and reconciliation for man to God

The Holy Spirit knew that one day he would be sent to man to draw them, to convict, and continuously pursue mans heart towards God

And knowing all of this, the trinity God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit - being one God

Still, spoke out and said “ “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.”

You cant tell me that God isn’t good, that his very nature is good, and out of his goodness he continuously pursues his people

Application

We live in a world that says we are unloving because we reject things that is outside of God’s intent, design, and will

Different religions will look down on us because we will not affirm sin that is outside of God’s intent, design, and will

And many will blame us, the church, as being hypocritical because we still sin that is outside of God’s intent, design, and will

This is even more reason for us to cling to, to have hope in, and to share the goodness of God

We must cling to the creation story as a testament of God’s goodness

We need to have sympathy with those who do not understand the goodness of God and we need to share it

We must never compromise or affirm anything that is outside of God’s intent, design, and will

This is how the beginnings of New Day Pasadena begins

We begin by staying true to God’s truth and his word

By having Faith in Jesus

By striving to live in righteousness

And sharing God’s goodness with others

Our beginning is good because God is good

Because our hope is not in ourselves but is in the one who saves

And if you are here today and you do not have the hope that is in Jesus Christ.....

Announcements

Connect Card - Please fill out and turn it in

Community Groups has started but we want you to join (Wednesday) 6:30pm, will be our first community group meet of the semester (Sign Up Sheet out in the foyer)

It is at the Hansen home and we wil get you the address, please feel free to reach out if you have any questions

Connect Class - Started this morning, again its not too late (Get to know us, get to know each other, have a lesson) 8:45am

New Day Mens Retreat - Men from all three locations will join together February 24-26 at Trinity Pines

Sign up online, it is $150 please please please do not let that deter you, let us know if the money aspect is an issue and we will take care of that for you

New Day Reading Plan - Website, top right tab you will see the BIble reading plan

Mon-Fri - Matthew chapters 16-20

Please stand and recieve the benediction before we leave -

Ephesians 3:20-21 “Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”

Thank you, you are now dismissed