Formless and Empty

Psalm of the Day: Psalm 87

Psalm 87 ESV

A Psalm of the Sons of Korah. A Song. On the holy mount stands the city he founded; the Lord loves the gates of Zion more than all the dwelling places of Jacob. Glorious things of you are spoken, O city of God. Selah Among those who know me I mention Rahab and Babylon; behold, Philistia and Tyre, with Cush— “This one was born there,” they say. And of Zion it shall be said, “This one and that one were born in her”; for the Most High himself will establish her. The Lord records as he registers the peoples, “This one was born there.” Selah Singers and dancers alike say, “All my springs are in you.”

Scripture Reading: John 1:9-14

John 1:9–14 ESV

The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Sermon:

1

Speaker 1

00:00

Well once again and as always good morning church, I was glad when they said to me let us go and worship in the house of the Lord. Well, this morning. We go from taking. Half a verse in the first sermon to two verses in the second sermon to tackling 31.

00:23

32 actually. All of chapter one. We’re going to read the the first verse of chapter 2, as well. Of the Book of Genesis. And is it a bit of a preface, right? Most of, you know, that I always say there are tests texts in any book of the Bible that I’m looking forward to preaching.

00:41

And there are portions of any book of the Bible that I am dreading to preach and Genesis is really fun uh because there are difficult things at the very, very beginning here in Genesis 1 and at the very end uh, There’s a lot of great stuff and I’m looking forward to most of this but Genesis 1.

01:04

Offers some very particular difficulties. For a, for a moment I thought about pulling out sort of all of the books that I have here and at my house and calling up some other Pastor friends and just pulling out the stack of books that no exaggeration might be as like half as tall as I am on just books about creation.

01:27

How did God create the theories abound in? How to read Genesis chapter 1. There’s the Gap Theory, the day age Theory, there’s The the six literal, 24-hour Day Theory, there’s the literary Theory. There are One commentator, probably one of my favorite commentators are Kent, Hughes he estimates that. There are no less than six particular worthy of our time and attention.

01:57

Ways that people read Genesis chapter 1, And it’s hard. And for many people, they lay down. They lay down a standard of. If you don’t agree with them in how to read Genesis 1, they won’t trust how you read. All of scripture, they’ll claim you’re not a Christian because of different views and opinions that you may have on this first book of Genesis.

02:21

So there’s there’s danger right to walk into this. But I would argue, there’s more danger in ignoring it so we have to deal with God’s word. And what’s said here? One of my pastor friends. I was told I’m about to start Genesis, we were talking on the phone and he said I did Genesis a while back, because I go how how’d you do it?

02:41

This is the things pastors. Talk about, he’s like, well, I knew Genesis 1 would be hard, so I I decided to structure the the series, through Genesis, we started in Genesis 12. We’re going to start in Genesis 12, go to the end, and then come back and do the pre-history in a lot of ways as a summary.

02:58

Oh, how’d that go? He said, well I do Genesis 12 through 50. Still wasn’t ready to do Genesis 1. So then I went and preached a book from the New Testament. And then once I finished that, I came back around, I still wasn’t ready, but then I was able to try to preach Genesis 1.

03:13

It’s a hard book, it’s a hard chapter in a hard book rather. And so this morning, Before we even dive into the sermon before we even read this text, before we get into what God’s word said, this is what I want to. Encourage you. I do have an opinion on the correct way to read and understand Genesis 1.

03:37

I think there is there are ways that are better in ways that are worse. But more than that. What I think is important is understanding how You read the Bible. How do you approach this text? We can’t just come and say, oh well this person, I like says, it’s this way.

03:58

So it has to be this way, right? You don’t get to say, well, Pastor David said, it’s this way so it must be true. Right, you need to read scripture. You need to be a workman approved. And so, more than tell you, The exact definition of how exactly the six days of creation play out.

04:18

Are these six literal, 24-hour days? Is this the day age Theory? Are these thousands of years? Is this the punctuation Theory where it’s great spans of time punctuated by these six days of creation? Is this a literary thing or we don’t have to read into these days at all instead of getting into those and weighing through those, I’m going to show you how to read this how I read this text.

04:43

And then allow you. To thoughtfully. Make a decision. While also giving you my hope and prayer is some practical application and some value. To your soul. So that being said, Genesis chapter 1, Through Genesis chapter 2 verse 1. It’s big, I want to read it all at once because if our goal is to understand how to read through this text.

05:07

Well, we’re going to have to read it. So Genesis chapter 1 starting in verse 1. In the beginning. God, created the heavens and the Earth. 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.

05:31

And God said, Let there be light. And there was And God saw that the light was good and God separated the light from the darkness, God called the light day and the Darkness he called night and there was evening, and there was morning the first day. And God said, Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters and let it separate the waters from the waters, and God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse.

06:03

And it was so And God called the expanse. And there was evening and there was morning. The second day. 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 God called the dry land Earth and the waters that were gathered together.

06:25

He called seas and God saw that, it was good. And God said, let the Earth Sprout, vegetation, plants, yielding seeds, and the fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed each according to its kind on the earth. And it was so The Earth brought forth, vegetation plants yielding seed, according to their own kinds and the trees bearing fruits, which is their seed each according to its kind And God saw that.

06:51

It was good. And there’s evening. And there was morning the third day. 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, for seasons, for days, and for years, and let them be light to the expanse in the heavens and give light to the Earth.

07:11

And it was. 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. And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, to rule over the day, and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness and God saw that.

07:30

It was good. And there was evening and there was morning the fourth day. And God said, let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let the birds fly above the Earth across the expanse of the heavens. So God, created the great sea creatures. And every living thing, Every living creature that moves, which was in the waters swarm, or according to their kinds and every winged bird, according to its kind, and God saw that, it was good.

07:58

And God blessed them saying, be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the Seas. Let the birds multiply in the earth and there was evening, and there was morning the fifth day. 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.

08:20

And it was so, 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. And 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 heaven and over the livestock, and over all the Earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.

08:48

So God created, man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him male and female He created them. And God bless 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.

09:07

And over every living thing that moves on the earth. And God said, behold I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of the Earth and every tree With seed in its fruit, you shall have them for food 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 breath of life.

09:27

I have given every green plant for food, And it was. And God saw everything that he had made and behold, it was very good. And there is evening. And there was morning, the Thus, the heavens and the Earth. We’re finished. And all the host of them. These are the words of the Lord for us this morning.

09:54

Let’s open with a word of prayer. Dear Lord, we do. Thank you for your grace. And mercy. That abounds to us who were once dead in sin and trespasses you make us alive together with Christ. You call out of nothing. Hope and life and healing into our lives. Thank you for this blessed hope.

10:17

Yeah, we thank you for your word, given to us. That we might know you help us to see your power. May we grow in awe and reverent fear of you, as we see your power on display through your works of creation. May you speak to our hearts through your word.

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Give. Your eyes to see and your ears to hear all that you have said and done. It’s in Jesus name we pray. Amen. Amen.

10:46

Genesis 1. In one chapter 31 verses? God creates the universe and all that’s in it. He sets them into order, he gives them a way that they are to work and to operate God sets here in motion the beginning of all things. Before we dive any deeper, before I show you how we’re going to read this.

11:11

I’m going to give you my my trick real quick Forest knows this trick. Well, he repeats it sometimes, he’s even told you it if you see something repeated over and over and over and over again, it’s probably important. And what you hear repeated over and over and over again in Genesis chapter 1 is God is doing something, right?

11:33

If you just scan through, you start in verse three, God said, verse 4, God saw verse four, God separated, verse 5, God called verse six. God says, or seven God made verse eight. God called verse nine. God said, verse 10, God called verse 11. God said, verse 12, God saw that that Was good, verse 14.

11:57

God said, you’ll notice a theme a flavor of all of the actions we go through. God is doing something the question we ask is, what is God doing? And how is he doing it? He’s creating But now we can ask how. And what I want you to see is There’s a framework that is being developed in Genesis, chapter 1.

12:24

God is a god of order. God does things in an orderly manner. And so it makes sense that even creation would have a certain order and a certain way that it would take place. And so my goal today is to teach you a framework. And that makes today’s sermon in a little bit different than a lot of sermons we cover.

12:47

We’re going to spend a lot of time talking about Hebrew words. Now, I don’t normally do that. So let me preface. We’re going to dive into these Hebrew words. Let me preface them by saying this, I think that often pastors pull out Hebrew. They pull out Greek because they think it makes them sound like super intelligent, right?

13:06

It also, They feel like it puts them on a pedestal as the one who knows, the Greek, and Hebrew, and you, well, you know, you’re lucky. You are blessed that I will bring you along into my wonderful Wide knowledge of these things. That’s not why I want to do Hebrew.

13:23

I have a firm belief that you should only do things in a sermon that help people understand God’s word. And so that’s actually why I want to do Hebrew. Because what I want to remove are some of our preconceived notions and certain things that we think we understand. And I want you to sort of approach this passage fresh and new.

13:44

So my hope is by looking at the Hebrew, right? Just two words. You can see and understand something that that might be a little more cloudy. If you had your own preconceived, notions going in. Does that make sense? Why we’re going to try to approach this? Also these are two very short words.

14:02

Two, very easy words and two words that rhyme. And so, my hope is as we approach these two rhyming, easy short words, you will understand the framework and the framework to Genesis 1, I believe and I submit to you. Is found in verse 2. In the English, we read this the Was without form.

14:28

And void. The Earth was without form. It’s one Hebrew word. And void. That’s another. And as we read through Genesis chapter 1, what I hope you see is God is endeavoring. He’s not a different, he’s going to succeed. The framework that God is going to use in creating. That’s a better way to say this.

14:56

Is he is remitting remedying. The formlessness. And the voidness. Of the earth. Here are your two Hebrew words. Here’s the first one. So we’re going to fill out. You got all these blanks in your eye. We’re going to fill them out. The first is the Hebrew word, tohu and look, I even do we have do we have the thing I gave you the Hebrew here, right?

15:22

All Hebrew. Writing, you have the big things here, are all the consonants, and the little dots, the little things, the lines, sometimes you’ll see, those are all your vowels, right? So you have Tau hey and this is a Constant a verbal letter. So ignore this one for a second, Tau, hey, this is Who toe?

15:47

Who Tohu means. Without form. Void chaos and confusion, right? This word appears actually often in the Hebrew Bible. It refers to what we’re looking at here, this idea of of emptiness, but it can also be the Wilderness, the outside the Untamed chaotic dangerous, sometimes scary, right? Tohu is confusion and and this sort of lack of structure and framework.

16:22

So to say, the Earth is tohu, right? The Earth is tohu means. The Earth is There’s no structure, there’s no order. It’s just sort of there. The Earth is tohu without form, it’s empty. Here there’s this boho. Void. Nothingness. Empty. Without substance according to the Lagos Bible dictionary. It’s emptiness and Wasteland.

16:54

Right? So we have tohu which is this chaotic void empty, nothing and bohu, which is this empty vacuous. Absolutely nothing. There is no, the way we should understand this to retohu and bohu. We read chapter 1, verse 2, the Earth has no order and it has no fullness. It has nothing.

17:18

And then as the days of creation unfold, what we see and begin to understand is God is remedying the tohu and the bohu that existed the Earth is formless And, The Earth is empty. There’s no structure. But then once you build a structure, right? It’s imagine if you imagine someone’s building a building And and you watch it go up, they spent a year and a half building these apartments right behind my house.

17:50

And first, they deal with the form, they go and they level out the land. They make sure the land has a form. It’s flat then they pour the foundation. They make sure that has a form, right? Then they do framing, which is literally making the form of the, ER, of the, the apartment complex.

18:07

Then they cover it then they come in and then they begin to put the groundwork, the initial things you need. They put in the carpet, the tile, the drywall. And yet the apartment’s still empty until someone comes and moves in and they bring in their Furniture and themselves, maybe their kids and thus uh what was once a spot behind?

18:25

My backyard is now an apartment complex filled with people. You deal with the form, but then you have to fill it. And that’s when we find complete-ness in what’s happening. And so, we will fix here now, the tohu And the bohu. And this is the way, I believe my goal is to show you why.

18:46

I think this because God is intentional, the days are laid out in such a way that first, we fix tohu. Then we fix bohu and then creation. Is done. As we get to day one day, one. Is God’s solution. To tohu. In day one. What does God make? Let’s read it.

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God said, verse 3. Let there be light. God creates light, and then He separates the light from the darkness, he calls the light day and he calls the darkness night. God makes the form Of the passing of time. He he created in such a way that now light and darkness no longer mingling And we see this form in such a way that even as we live our lives, what would this even look like right?

19:42

If God had not done this? We think the darkness and Light aren’t separated, If they’re mingling, we can’t even fathom. What this would look like. And part of the reason we can’t fathom is because God made the world in such a way that this is how it works. He made it such that, the form of the world is light and darkness are separated Now, we have the form, and the form is light, goes here, Darkness here, and the lightest day.

20:11

The darkness is night and this is God setting the form work. So, where there was once chaos and confusion. Now, we have order light and darkness that God continues the tohu in day. Two, is fixed. When God said, let there be an expanse in the midst of waters and separate the waters from the waters.

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The waters and and water. Here we should understand water in general, is marked even more like in our minds, in our hearts, and When Moses is writing, sort of ancient near Theology and in their heart of chaos and confusion. And what the Bible is saying, what Moses is saying, is God brings that chaos into order.

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Such that there is water above water below, everything in its place as God sees fit. Again, if we think of the before, and after there’s mitts mist and Haze and confusion, And here, God gives Clarity. Separating the water below from the water above. We now have this sense of the atmosphere in many ways we want to put modern names to these things.

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We have land Earth and then the heavens above. And we see that there is an order and there’s a framework by, which God is making things. So first, he makes light separates light from Darkness, the framework is being made, then he begins to separate the waters, Waters above Waters below, the framework is being made finally day three, God fully fixes the problem of formlessness.

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The problem of tohu. When God creates land and vegetation to grow on that land. Day three. God said let the Earth. Or sorry. Let the waters under the heavens, be gathered together into one place and let dry land appear. So now God is sorting, we have the the rivers and the oceans and the lakes, and the Seas, and we have the land, and the mountains and the valleys, and the deserts.

22:12

And even in the midst of this land, right? So if we’re going to go to my building an apartment analogy, right? We had the light and darkness, we flattened the land, we laid the the foundation, that’s day two. Now we framework. And then we drywall and shingles, and we lay the foundation to fill this.

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This Earth. So we have land and trees and plants and Seed, all of it bearing fruit. According to its kind, And thus, Tohu. Is no longer a problem. The formlessness of the world has been taken care of. Light and darkness have their place, the waters above the waters below, they have their place.

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The ground Springs forth, the ground has its place, the water has its place. There’s life and goodness. At the hands of God as he remedies this problem, Of formlessness of tohooth. But wait. The Earth was tohu and bohu the Earth was em formless. Well, that’s taken care of but it’s still empty.

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And then each day in succession will match up, God will fix the emptiness. By filling it with something. And this is where this really starts to click right if you’re like well I don’t know if I fully understand what David’s saying here. Day one. We have light and darkness.

23:48

And night, what fills those things? Well what God creates on day? Four. The Sun, the Moon. And the stars. Before day four, we had just light and there was light, and there was this division. But what marked? The division? What in one sense? Ruled over the division, right? When we read in day four?

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When God says, he lets the the greater to rule the day and the Lesser to rule the night. This isn’t like Importing Egyptian theology, where the God is the, the sun is somehow a god ruler. Is saying that God sets them over and above and fills them. And so the day is filled by the Sun and the bright Shining Light of the sun, fills the day, and the moon fills the night, the moon, and the stars, and the sky above them, thus day and night, light and dark.

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God has filled, they are now light and darkness are not tohu or bohu. They have been given a form and they’ve been filled And then in day two, what did God make in day two? He created the waters above And the waters below. They’re still empty. Until God fills them on day five.

25:05

What does God make in day five? Fish in the Seas below. So, the Seas below, Now they have a form tohu and they’re filled with all sorts of fish and all sorts of other things. The bohus taken care of And the Waters above the skies. They’ve been given a form and now God creates the birds of the sky, as they fly and we see them.

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There’s now a fullness. So The Emptiness or sorry, the the formlessness was taken care of in day two. The Emptiness is fixed in day. Five. And just to drive this point home, what does God create in day six? Well, in day three, he created land and plants. But what lives on the land.

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What eats those plants. There needs to be a fullness. And so, in day six, God creates all of the beasts. And in a special Act of Creation that we’ll cover in a couple weeks. God creates, man. Thus. The problems that the Earth had. The tohu and the bohu. Have been fixed.

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God. In a sovereign Act of creative power over the course of six days. Remedies. Fixes. Makes beautiful and right. All of creation. That’s the point. I think what Moses wants us to see is that God has an order and a structure to how he is going to do things.

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And the way God is going to do, things is going to perfectly Rectify. Every problem that you seem to have And this then starts to become what I think is most important, right? So you might want to ask. Okay, David. So are these six 24-hour days? I don’t know.

27:05

What is the time frame between Genesis 1? 1 and Genesis 1 2. I don’t know. What do I personally believe? Because I know that this will this will hang in people’s hearts sometimes if I don’t actually say this.

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God spoke. And it happened. God could have done it all in. 36 seconds, instead he chose us. He could have done, the less than 36 hundreds of a billionth of a nanosecond. God could have spoken, everything comes into existence. He chose for whatever reason to form and fashion. The way he presented to us his creation in these series of six days and there’s probably something to them.

27:49

And only it’s an accident that that we have this language, this flow and this going on here. So, I lean more towards A what we would call Young Earth literal 24-hour periods. But as long as you keep this, honestly, as long as you can keep this, I don’t care as much.

28:15

If that’s fair enough, right? If you want to argue this, we can talk about this. It gets a little more convoluted and I’d be happy to talk about that, but Here, we stand. The framework is God is fixing the tohu and the bohu the formlessness and The Emptiness he does.

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So over the course of six days, perfectly, creating all things, thus in chapter 2 verse 1, we can read thus the heavens and the Earth are finished God’s done with creation. In six days, all of these problems are fixed and this gets us to what I really want to hit at today this morning for us.

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The value. In understanding. And because it is so big. We’ve already gone a bit long but I want. I want to give you three thoughts. That that highlight the value and understanding what the way scripture works here the first God, did it? And only God could do it. These problems of tohu and bohu were so big and so encompassing the very fabric of the Earth was without form and void.

29:26

This was a huge monster problem that God came in and fixed. Right. I noted this at the very beginning but just read through, here’s your homework. Read through chapter one. And just circle. If you see God and then a verb, right? The ones you will see said called made saw.

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Those will be the verbs action words every time you see God and an action word. Circle it And just see on display that God is doing God is working. God is doing this. This idea that God said, God is speaking. All of these things into existence by the power of his word.

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God can do it. He speaks and it’s done. And it’s done and it’s done. It’s not that God goes and he faces it right? These aren’t spinning plates, right? The tohu and the bohu are not out here fighting against God such that, if he is distracted, for three seconds, all of this is going to creep back in creation has a set order.

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This is why science works, and if you want to get into the whole science and religion debate, this is how far I’ll go into it. The reason science works is because God fixed the tohu and bohu gave us an orderly formed. Is filled and it stands because God said it and it was done.

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God, did it?

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God sought. He named it. God is the one who gives everything a name. Thus showing his power and authority. God did it? That’s your first point. Your second. The value and understanding that God is going around fixing the tohu, and the bohu God did it as one God deserves praise for it.

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Is. When we look to the works of God as he perfectly fixes, these problems of emptiness and formlessness. He then deserves all glory honor and praise and adoration God in his Works. He looks at them. They are all very good.

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And for that, he deserves, praise Matthew, Henry writes. This when we come to think about our works, We find to our shame that much has been very bad. But when God saw his work, all was very good. Good fruits. Just as the Creator would have it to be all his Works.

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In all places of his Dominion bless him and therefore, May I say bless the Lord. O my soul. God fixed it. Perfectly. He therefore deserves all glory honor. Praise. And adoration. In all of these things. God deserves praise and adoration when you walk outside and see that God has fixed the tohu and the bohu that ruled over creation such that it is orderly.

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Not just orderly, but beautiful and wonderful praise be to God. That’s the point. The God Who calls the universe into existence by the power of his word, who calms, who sets order to the chaos, who fills The Emptiness, The God, Who does these things? Deserves all praise. That’s two number three.

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What is the value in understanding that God will take care of the tohu and bohu in your life? Or the third point is God will continue to do so. In your life. I mean that’s the point. The point is that the God, who take care of this, who took care of, this still takes care of this in my life.

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Again to go to Matthew Henry in his commentary on Genesis because I think he he’s one of the commentaries that got this right that sort of sees through the haze of Genesis 1 to these truths This is what Matthew Henry said. In a like manner, The work of Grace in the Is a new creation.

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And in a graceless, Soul. One, that is not born again. There is disorder confusion in every evil work. It is. Empty of all good. For it is without God. It is dark. It is, in fact, Darkness itself, he says, This is our condition by Nature. Until? Almighty Grace. Works a change.

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In. Apart from God in our own strength and might our lives are nothing, but tohu and bohu. They are formless and empty. The Book of Ecclesiastes said that life was a striving, a chasing, after the wind. That’s pretty empty, vanity vanity all is vanity. This is the testimony of scripture.

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You were once dead in your sin and trespasses, you were tohu and bohu Rebels to God. Having no hope. No purpose. No meaning apart from God, this is the testimony of scripture. But the further testimony of scripture in Genesis 1 is that God will take care of fix and remedy that tohu and bohu and then all of scripture becomes God doing that in your life.

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He calls Abraham calls him sets him apart makes a covenant with him, so that he would have a great nation that would come out of him. That great nation is the He would come to David and promise to David. There will be a king of yours on the throne because these people need someone to rule over them to enforce the the solution to the tohu and bohu God is going to do it and then Jesus comes and these problems are fixed.

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God. In his perfect might and power. Can remedy your tohu.

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Long ago, there was a philosopher by the name of Blaise Pascal. If you remember Middle School and High School math, you might remember Pascal’s triangle. He was also a mathematician.

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But he’s also a philosopher. And in his philosophy he tried to point people to God and this is what he wrote. He said, Fallen man. Has an abyss. Which can be filled only by an infinite immutable object, which is to say, it can only be filled by God himself.

So, here’s the question: Do you feel the weight of that vacuum, that emptiness that tohu in your life? Some uncomfortable space that’s their due to your sin. If you feel that weight, then here is your hope: come to Christ. Say: here is my cup. Lord, fill it. And by the grace available to us through the person, work of Jesus Christ, his grace and forgiveness flows in. And in your life that formless emptiness is replaced by God in his work, whom the son sets free is free indeed. So for you who here today Feel the weight of the emptiness of Life apart from God, turn to him. If You feel the, the pain of the formnesses of life when God is not directing your steps, come and turn to him.

His fullness will become yours. Let’s pray.