God Created

Psalm of the Day: Psalm 86

Psalm 86 ESV

A Prayer of David. Incline your ear, O Lord, and answer me, for I am poor and needy. Preserve my life, for I am godly; save your servant, who trusts in you—you are my God. Be gracious to me, O Lord, for to you do I cry all the day. Gladden the soul of your servant, for to you, O Lord, do I lift up my soul. For you, O Lord, are good and forgiving, abounding in steadfast love to all who call upon you. Give ear, O Lord, to my prayer; listen to my plea for grace. In the day of my trouble I call upon you, for you answer me. There is none like you among the gods, O Lord, nor are there any works like yours. All the nations you have made shall come and worship before you, O Lord, and shall glorify your name. For you are great and do wondrous things; you alone are God. Teach me your way, O Lord, that I may walk in your truth; unite my heart to fear your name. I give thanks to you, O Lord my God, with my whole heart, and I will glorify your name forever. For great is your steadfast love toward me; you have delivered my soul from the depths of Sheol. O God, insolent men have risen up against me; a band of ruthless men seeks my life, and they do not set you before them. But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. Turn to me and be gracious to me; give your strength to your servant, and save the son of your maidservant. Show me a sign of your favor, that those who hate me may see and be put to shame because you, Lord, have helped me and comforted me.

Scripture Memorization: Genesis 50:19-20

Genesis 50:19–20 ESV

But Joseph said to them, “Do not fear, for am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.

New Testament Reading: Romans 11:33-36

Romans 11:33–36 ESV

Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! “For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?” “Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?” For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.

Sermon:

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Speaker 1

00:01

Well, I will say this, especially When I miss a Sunday. Due to a medical emergency known as a kidney stone. I, I can say with full confidence. It’s good to see you this morning church and I am definitely glad when they and I’m always glad. When they say to me, let us go and Worship in the house of the Lord especially when we get to open and read God’s word together.

00:32

We are. Starting the continuation of what we started, but didn’t start last week with our sermon series through the Book of Genesis. The slides. Uh, right there in the bottom corner. You see a number two, if you look in your bulletin, it’s sermon number two. In a series, you might be thinking, well, we didn’t have sermon one.

00:56

You did Lawrence. And Dan did a fantastic job. Everything they said about what the book is about. Even just reading chapter one of the Book of Genesis, I think laid the foundation said everything. Really, that I wanted to say for the most part. And so we’re just gonna plow through and keep the schedule.

01:15

So this is the second sermon. In our series, through the book of Genesis. Our text last week was going to be. This is part of why I’m doing this too. Our text last week was going to be Genesis 1 1 a just the first half and then this week we were going to continue that thought and do Genesis 1.

01:37

One and two. And so we’ll just plow through we’ll be looking in the first two verses and you might be thinking, okay, two two scheduled sermons in and where two verses in Genesis is 50 chapters long. We’re gonna be in Genesis a long time. We are. I promise we’ll speed up our our Pace a little bit.

01:57

But here in the beginning, there’s big things, there’s difficult things, uh and it’s just there’s a lot to try to cover. So our text for this morning This is one starting in verse 1. We will be reading all the way. Through verse. In the beginning. God, created the heavens.

02:20

And the And 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. These are the words of the Lord for us this morning. Let’s open with a word of prayer.

02:39

Almighty God. The creator of Heaven and Earth the one who spoke the universe and all things into existence. We thank you. For your power, for your might for your goodness, your grace, your salvation, you have given to us. We thank you. That you see fit. To not just create, but in your creation to reveal yourself to us.

03:03

And then even more. So after revealing yourself in creation, you reveal yourself in a particular way through your word. And so, as we open your word today, we pray that you would speak to our hearts speak to our minds. May we be filled with all of your goodness and Grace as we see your power on display.

03:21

Pray that you would use this time for our good but most importantly, for your glory. We pray all this and the name that is above all other names. The name of Jesus Christ. Our Lord Amen. And amen. Well, because I wasn’t able to be here last week. I feel it right to start with a review of last week, and I put review in quotes because I didn’t preach this.

03:46

But my goal is to give you the short short version of the big points of what I was going to preach last week so that we can get to what I wanted to preach this week. It, if you notice the title of our sermon series, I’ll even just go back to a slide here.

04:05

Just so, you know, a little bit about me how I like to preach and what I try to do every book has what I call a melodic line. I didn’t make that up. I stole that from David Helm who probably stole that from something else. And the melodic line is is the theme the heartbeat and the message that runs through the book.

04:28

And just so, you know what, I think the melodic line of any book is it’s going to be the title of a sermon series. So, if we remember back to the book of Isaiah, The the sermon series we went through was Isaiah. God Saved. Sinners. Because the message of Isaiah as Isaiah is pronouncing judgment, and difficulty is the hope that God will save the rebellious people.

04:52

That Isaiah is prophesying to And then, we move to Matthew, and I called Matthew Kingdom Authority, because Matthew was all about Jesus building his kingdom and how he Jesus has the authority to build that Kingdom. And then we went to Ecclesiastes and Ecclesiastes, the whole Hope was How do we live in a vain?

05:18

And more importantly, it was Ecclesiastes life in a broken world. What does life look like in a world? That’s vain and difficult. And then we moved to Philippians and Philippians. It was Philippians. Joy in gospel, togetherness because the point of Philippians was together and we are together because of the Gospel because we are all in Christ.

05:39

That’s the gospel. We have joy and we do that together. It was joy and gospel togetherness. Well in Genesis the theme the the melodic line that runs through this book. I would say is in the beginning

05:57

And so, as we review, I just want to help you see them. Melodic line here, we start with The beginning. The point of Genesis is to lay out the beginning. Of truly, all things. If we were to just walk through the Book of Genesis, we start with in the beginning and then God creates And God creates a universe and all that’s in it.

06:22

By the power of his word. But then God in particular as we get into Genesis chapter 2 in particular, we get to the beginning of man. God creates man in a special way. And then in Genesis 3, we have the beginning of the problem in the beginning of sin as man Falls.

06:37

But we also, if you remember back to our our Advent series and our first sermon, our first sermon in that series about the snake crusher. We have the beginning of God’s solution to the problem. And then, we have the beginning of the the way that this all works out, and you have the beginning of the battle between the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent and Cain and Abel.

06:59

Then you have the beginning of what life will begin to look. Like is, you have people living and dying and living, and having kids and dying and living, and having kids and dying, And then we get to the beginning of the real weight of the problem, in the book of Noah in the Book of Genesis, the story rather of Noah begins to show us how bad the problem is.

07:22

And so God sort of hits reset at Noah in a lot of ways and we get to the beginning. Again it’s a hard reset start over. We’re going to try again with Noah but Noah messed up. We have the beginning of sin compounding. And in the beginning of these things as they grow and continue and then we’re introduced after the Tower of Babel and all of these things to a man named Abraham.

07:42

And here we have the beginning of God calling and sealing and selecting a group of people that he will Covenant with. And so we have the beginning of God’s people and the beginning of God covenanting God making promises to people. And we see this grow as we grow through and we see the Patriarchs and Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and then the whole Joseph Saga, And in all of this, we see that God is working from the beginning.

08:07

We start, this is a book of Beginnings. But what we cannot miss in the Book of Genesis is that it’s in the beginning.

08:19

God. Now, in the beginning and then some other stuff happened, it was just random occurrences going on. Genesis the heartbeat of Genesis is that God is the one moving and working. God is the one who ordained all things. God is the one who is Sovereign over all every event.

08:36

Every moment, everything that occurs is underneath God’s Sovereign hand. The Book of Genesis wants us to see That from the beginning and in the beginning and since the beginning and to the end, it was always all about God. God’s plan. God’s grace. God’s salvation. God’s judgment God’s working. God’s doing it all.

09:02

The Book of Genesis is a book about the beginning of all things, but don’t lose sight that it’s always been about God and what he’s working on. This is why for a bit of explanation, right? We’ve done this now, two weeks, we have what I’m calling the scripture memorization.

09:20

And we pulled out, I pulled out Genesis 50, 19 and 20. Because what, I hope you see, and remember by memorizing, this verse to try to explain this I wanted to select a verse that if you memorized the verse, You would remember the heartbeat. Of Genesis. So Genesis 15 19 Joseph is speakings the very end of the book.

09:46

But Joseph said to them, that them is his brothers. Do not fear for. Am I in the place of God? So, if we pause here, What Joseph is saying is Joseph is saying with his mouth what Genesis has been proving and what we need to know and understand that God is Seated on the throne and only God is Seated on the throne since the beginning, in the beginning, God he was there.

10:10

God is in that place we are not. God is Sovereign. Joseph asks, do not fear. Am I in the place of God? As for you, You meant evil against me, but God Meant it for good. To bring it about that, many people should be kept alive. As they are today.

10:35

Joseph’s Brothers in a while, when we get to the end of Genesis, we’ll see this Joseph’s Brothers, plotted, and schemed and conspired. They tortured and abused in many ways. Their brothers, they threw him in a, will they waited for these guys to come? They were going to kill him.

10:49

They said, you know, let’s not kill him. Let’s do something worse, in many ways. Let’s send him into Egyptian slavery. And they sent him off and they lied to their dad and said that he got attacked by animals and his dad’s mourning, because his beloved, son’s dead. They ruined Joseph’s life.

11:03

They thought And their goal was to ruin Joseph, their intention was to ruin Joseph’s life. They didn’t like that. He’d been bragging about how they would bow down to him. They didn’t like a lot of the things going on here. So their intention, what they intended. Was for Joseph to be harmed, they meant evil against him, but what Joseph is saying is Doesn’t matter what you meant.

11:30

Because in the beginning, All of your scheming, all of your stuff. It doesn’t matter because God was scheming and planning long before you were and God intended this for good. What you intended for evil? God intended, he meant his holy Sovereign. Purpose was for good since the beginning. God.

11:53

That’s the point. And so as we go through Genesis, as we walk through Genesis, remember this in the beginning.

12:03

All throughout. God to the very end, God it’s always about God, it’s never about us any way that you read Genesis that you think this is a story about me. So I feel better about myself. If that’s your first thought you’re doing it wrong, if that’s your second third, fourth fifth, you’re probably doing it right.

12:25

This is a book about God and what he has done from the beginning. That’s the point. So, what do we want to talk about today? That’s last week’s sermon in a short condensed version and we’re missing some blanks, but in the beginning, God, Well here, as we get to the further part of Genesis 1 1, We read in the beginning, God.

12:48

Created. Moses, as he writes the Book of Genesis, Starts at the very beginning. Which is according to The Sound of Music, a very good place to start. He starts at the beginning with God. In a miraculous and beautiful Act of his Sovereign power and authority. God begins to create In the fur in the Hebrew if you were to read this book in the Hebrew, This idea in the beginning.

13:23

God created is the first three words and that’s just how translation works sometimes, right? But the first three words in the beginning, God created in the Hebrew, that’s the first three words. What Moses wants us to see, is God, by Sovereign act, according to his Sovereign power chooses. To create.

13:47

Before we can dive into the blanks, hear me on this. God did not need to create anything. God was already, God Sovereign, perfect needing, nothing God by a special work of his power and in a special outpouring of his grace decided to create, that’s how this works in the beginning, God created.

14:12

But what he’d create? Let me help you. It’s an easy answer. Everything. The phrase Moses uses is the heavens and the Earth. We can think about this, two ways in the literal way, but also in the literary way and they both explain what’s going on here. The. So here’s the literal way, we would think through this God created the Earth.

14:42

And then the heavens, which is everything surrounding the Earth, it’s the entire universe, right? So the Earth but then all the other things, all of the stars in the sky, all of the everything God, created everything. And if you have to ask well, what about The question is is this something?

15:00

If the answer is yes, then it’s part of everything. And God created God created. Things. This is a scriptural truth. That is a literal reality. Truth, that scripture proclaims over and over and over again that God’s the one who created everything and because God created everything he is owed.

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All honor, praise dominion and submission to him. And as scripture goes on to explain this who we are hinges. On this fact that God is the one who created all things. We can look at this in in many different ways.

15:49

Here’s the way Paul would go. In the Book of Romans. God makes us. As we get to chapter two and most of you know this so this isn’t I don’t think a spoiler alert. He creates us out of dust. And mud. Just like Pottery. And so scripture is like hey this is a good picture.

16:13

The Potter. Takes the mud. And he makes it into whatever he wants it to be. And the mud doesn’t get to say, you know, I wish that you had made me differently. This is Romans 8:9, right? 789, just go read through there. This is Paul’s. Because God created everything that includes me.

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And so God as Creator has Sovereign authority over me, he gets to tell me. What life is like? He gets to tell me what, I’m like, he gets to tell me what I am and what I’m called for and what purpose? He placed me here on this Earth for, why?

16:54

Because God created everything. And it’s no good. What can the clay say to the Potter? Nothing. Could we complain? And say God I wish you made me for some other use. No. The fact that God created, everything is a testimony to his Sovereign power. But as we say, God created everything, let’s not forget John chapter 1.

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When John sat down to write his gospel, the Gospel of John, he had probably just finished an in-depth study of the Book of Genesis because his goal in writing John as you sort of read Genesis and John together. His goal was to be like okay there’s Genesis in the Old Testament.

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Let me give you Genesis in the New Testament. Right. If Genesis 1, 1 starts within the beginning, God gen John 1. 1 starts with, in the beginning, was the word. But he’s really saying in the beginning God, but then we get to verse three, all things were made through him.

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And without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. All things. Were made through him. And in particular John says, when you read in the beginning, God created know this. That is the power and work and authority of the son.

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That is Jesus Christ. Our Savior and Lord and maker. We’d often say that we say Jesus, he’s a friend who sticks close to the brother. He’s my savior. He’s my Lord and all of those things are correct. He’s also the one who made me. And as the one who made me, He owns me.

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And that’s a beautiful wonderful thing. Because he’ll care for me. And he’ll love me. It’ll guide me. And will keep me. Because he made.

18:50

Don’t lose sight of this point in the beginning. God created the heavens. And the Earth. I said, there’s another way the literal way is I think the heavens, the Earth and everything around it, right the heavens and the Earth. The literary way to read this is this is what’s known here’s your fancy word and I was like to give you like one or two words, you can impress your friends with it’s called amerism We see these a lot in scripture, right?

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When it talks about he will take our sin as far away as the East is from the West, right? He’s using two extremes to illustrate everything in between When we say God, created the heavens. It’s one extreme and the Earth. That’s the other. We’re saying God, created all And he created all things.

19:40

From nothing.

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Now, this is important. It’s a rather technical. But it’s one, I hope we understand. And my goal is to try to explain this to you, and for you to see why this is such an important point for us to make, When God. Sat down I’m going to use figurative language here.

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I didn’t actually sit down and decide when God decided when God sat down inside. I’m going to create. The everything. It wasn’t as if. There was a whole bunch of stuff just floating around, right? Like unused Lego blocks. And God was like, I’ll use these Lego blocks and then I’ll make what I want to make.

20:28

Now, if it got had done that, that’s still pretty impressive. But what God did is infinitely better. The fancy phrase that we would use to describe this is X nihilo. That’s Latin. It just means from nothing. It’s why we have this here. When God began to create. He created everything.

20:52

Out of nothing. All things that exist. Began to exist with God’s creative power and would cease to exist without his creative power. Because we came from nothing. And God created all things. And as we try to dive into this, I’ll just note this, I have a couple books in my office right now.

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One is called from not, there are books written on why it’s so important. We understand that God created everything from nothing. And let me just try to to summarize it Without diving into deep theological points, those exist. But by explaining to you why this is important to me. And I hope then you can see why it’s important to you.

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And the biggest point, and the biggest reason. That we, we hang Faith on a God who created everything out of nothing is twofold one. It shows us. Who God is? And God is The Sovereign, Eternal ruler of all things in heaven and on Earth. And he does this because he’s the only It’s so hard to Priestess without using philosophical terms.

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He’s the only essential being And what I’m saying, there’s he’s the only thing that has to exist. I didn’t have to exist. God by his grace allowed me to exist. This world didn’t have to exist, Guided by his grace allowed this world to exist. The only thing that has to exist is God, he’s the only thing in the entire universe, and in particular, we should say this outside of the universe because God exists above it.

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That must exist. It’s gone. Because the universe came from nothing. Means we didn’t have to be. We are. The philosophical term here is an accent. I’m not saying you’re an accident. What I am saying is only God is necessary. So, the first reason we need to believe this is because it shows us who God is.

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And who we are. It’s the first reason, but here’s a second and the second one’s a little more personal.

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And to get there. Allow me to preach the gospel to you for just a second.

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Genesis 3 will get us to the root of the problem. I’ll fast forward a little bit. We’re all sinners.

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But the way scripture defines this, Is not just that, here’s your problem. You’re a sinner. That would be a problem. The problem.

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Is that you are a dirty rotten sinner.

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But the real real real problem is You are dead. In your sin and trespasses. That’s the language Paul uses in Romans.

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And dead people. And dead things. Have nothing.

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Eventually, even the body. Dries up. From ashes to ashes and dust to dust.

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We have nothing. We can claim nothing. Because of my sin because I’m a rebel to God. I have no goodness to call my own. I have no claim on. God’s goodness, Grace, Mercy. I have nothing. I have Nothing.

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It’s a problem.

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But, Because God has the power. An authority. To create things out of nothing. I have hope.

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And my hope is.

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To misquote a verse for a second, the same power that called creation to exist, out of nothing is the same power that caused me to Out of death. One of my favorite theologians Hermann favink wrote this. He said today. That’s funny. He wrote this a long time ago, but today still applies today.

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Faith is essentially still the same as it was in the days of the Old, and New Testaments. It’s a believing against. If the Assurance of things hoped for and the conviction of things, unseen faith is a deep seated confidence that with God, all things are possible that he who raised Christ from the dead still raises the dead.

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He still saves Sinners and hears the point I’m trying to make here forever calls into existence things that do not exist.

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He gave me a new life. When I was dead. Nothing.

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He gave me new life. And so, the fact that God can create the universe from nothing gives me hope that he can give me new life, and I can walk in this newness of life, and he can revive these dead bones. When we, we talk about that regard, that that God calls dead bones to life dead bones.

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Who have nothing, he gives them life because God can create from nothing.

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So the hope we have even as we as we crack open the Book of Genesis and we we are confronted with the very first words of scripture. Here’s your hope that there is a beginning and if there is a beginning, there’s a beginner. The one who created and began all things, his name is God And this God created everything he created you, if he created you will he not care for you and love you?

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And he can do so in such a way, because when there is nothing, he can create everything. So when you are dead, he can call you to life. And when you have nothing, he can give you everything because every good and perfect, gift flows down from him. When we had nothing, he gives us everything because he’s a God who creates from nothing.

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And so trust in him. Put your hope in him as we open as we go through the Book of Genesis hear. The hope that we have from the beginning. God was working. And if you look at your life and you feel like I have nothing, congratulations, that’s God’s. Favorite thing to work with is absolutely nothing.

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He created the universe with it, he can do more than that in your life. Look to Him for salvation. Hope and healing. Trust in him, he will be with you. Let’s pray.