In the Beginning
Notes
Transcript
Good morning
I work out almost every day. Monday, I almost worked out. Tuesday I almost worked out. Wednesday I almost worked out.
Monday night men's study and football. Please sign up if you are planning on coming that way Steve can have enough food for everyone!
This last Wednesday when I was not working out, at our study, we talked about weeping and rejoicing with one another. We are called to be there for each other in the good and the bad and the in between. We don’t have to have words for the situation, we are to first and foremost to be there.
Today we are going to be in Genesis 1:1-2.
We are going to look at the beginning of almost all things! There is one that has no beginning, that is God. God was not created, He has always been and will always be. If this is not true, He is not God. We will see that in the beginning, God was there.
Genesis 1 tells how God created the world. It provides for the unfolding narrative of Scripture. Chapter 1 shows who the main character of the Bible is - God - and reveals His goodness. The Bible’s opening, is more concerned about the who of creation than the how. Genesis 1 demonstrates the authority and sovereignty of Yahweh over creation.
There are three nonnegotiables that are central to the Christian doctrine of creation.
The virgin birth of creation. God creates ex nihilo. God creates from nothing or out of nothing. There was nothing in existence before God spoke.
Virtuous birth of creation. The goodness of all creation before the fall. Nothing that God created was bad.
The birth of a historical and literal Adam. There was one man, created by God, from whom the entire human race descends.
We will see these three things as we go through the creation story in the coming weeks. The enemy wants to put doubt in our minds about these three things. When we doubt the Biblical creation story, we begin to doubt the God of the Bible.
Please stand as we prepare to read God’s Word.
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 And the earth was a formless and desolate emptiness, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.
Pray
Even though the name of this book is “The Beginnings”, it is not the beginning of God. Genesis is a story about our beginning that started with God creating everything.
God is completely self-sufficient and needs nothing more than Himself in order to exist or to act. A.W. Tozer wrote “ God has a voluntary relation to everything He has made, but He has no necessary relation to anything outside of Himself.” God needs nothing, neither the material universe nor the human race, and yet He created both.
It is impossible for us as finite beings to completely understand God who is eternal. Contemplating the nature and character of the Triune God who always was, always is, and always will be, and who never changes, is a task that overwhelms us.
Moses wrote in Psalm 90:2
2 Before the mountains were born
Or You gave birth to the earth and the world,
Even from everlasting to everlasting, You are God.
Frederick Faber expressed it this way:
Timeless, spaceless, single, lonely,
Yet sublimely Three,
Thou are grandly, always, only God in Unity!
Habakkuk said Habakkuk 1:12
12 Are You not from time everlasting,
Lord, my God, my Holy One?
We will not die.
You, Lord, have appointed them to deliver judgment;
And You, O Rock, have destined them to punish.
Ray-sheeth’ baw-raw’ Elohim. In the beginning God. If this is true, then the whole rest of the Bible is true. If this is not true, the rest of the Bible is just a book. God can’t be God if He was created. God is the great I am! He was, He is, and He always will be!! He is the only true God!
It is important to know who God is and His attributes. It is only by knowing these things that we can truly worship Him as He should be worshipped. I believe one of the biggest problems with the Western Church is we have forgotten who the God of the Bible is. We are Biblically illiterate and if we don’t know the Bible, we can’t truly know God!
This 1st verse is intended to call our attention to the fact that it was God who was there and the one who created everything. Not some random explosion that somehow created a complex universe.
Science would tell us that the natural order is much older than the genealogies of Genesis. This declaration by scientists have cause many to abandon or to reinterpret the teachings of Genesis. People would rather believe the same people who for decades said Pluto was a planet, yet today we know that it does not meet all the requirements for a planet. We have lost the craft of being Bereans! Science has many errors in it, the Bible has none! We need to use the Bible as our foundation, not what scientists say.
I believe that Elohim who is able to speak things into existence can also speak things into existence that seem to be very old! Nothing is impossible for God! Look at me, I am only 25 years old!
If we take the ages of the people in the Bible we can go backwards and see that the world is somewhere between 6-10 thousand years old. Science laughs at this statement.
Science wants to tell you that it is somewhere between 3 and 30 billion years old. They mock and laugh at those who think the earth is young. They want to shame and embarrass those who believe something different. Yet they have a 27 billion year gap in their theory! To me that is more laughable than a young earth.
Genesis 1:1 says
The word for word translation from Hebrew is “In the Beginning created God the heavens and the earth.
Unlike mankind, God created from nothing and made something. We can only take things and use them to make other things. We create nothing, we only make things. Only God has the power and authority to create things!
The word used for God here is Elohim. It is used 32 times in chapter one. Elohim is the Hebrew word that emphasizes His majesty and power. The covenant name for God, Jehovah, doesn’t appear until chapter 2:4.
Elohim reveals His power by creating everything by merely speaking the word! Matter is not eternal, it did not exist until God spoke it into existence.
The first thing God created was the heavens and the earth. Just think about that for a minute. The vastness of the heavens and the earth! God created them by simply speaking. Just like I am speaking today, that is what God did and the heavens and earth were created! He had not put order into the heavens and earth, He just created the matter that made them up.
Verse 2 tells us that it was formless and desolate emptiness and there was darkness covering the surface of the deep. We call this chaos for a lack of a better word. God created everything He needed for creation and the rest of Chapter one is God ordering the chaos and His creation.
We see also that the Holy Spirit was there hovering over the chaos. Not only is God eternal, but so is His Spirit. It was there already in existence at the beginning. We can see in John 1:1-5
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 came into being through Him, and apart from Him not even one thing came into being that has come into being. 4 In Him was life, and the life was the Light of mankind. 5 And the Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not grasp it.
14 And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us; and we saw His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
Jesus was there at the beginning! Jesus was not created on the day He was born on earth! That was just they day He to on a human form. He is eternal just like God the Father and God the Spirit.
The Spirit hovering over the waters signals a pattern that appears throughout the Bible. The Spirit brings order out of chaos. Where do we see this language about the Spirit hovering as an act of new creation again? When the angel Gabriel tells Mary that the Spirit of the Lord will overshadow her. Luke 1:35
35 The angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; for that reason also the holy Child will be called the Son of God.
This is the same kind of language used in Genesis 1.
We see something similar when Jesus is baptized in the Jordan river. The Spirit descended on Him.
Throughout the Scriptures, all three members of the Trinity are associated with creation.
We see the Spirit here in verse 2.
Yahweh is associated in verse 1 and in Psalm 8.
Christ’s role is revealed to us by Paul in Colossians 1:16
16 for by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones, or dominions, or rulers, or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him.
God created everything by speaking. The Spirit hovered over the chaos and put things in order.
The Triune God has always been, He is outside of time and space!
TimeLine with the dots that represent events.
God is self existent. He needs nothing other than Himself to exist. We need God in order to exist. Nothing is created without God creating it, including new life. God doesn’t need us, we need Him!
The CSB Spurgeon Study Bible: Notes Spurgeon on Genesis
Everything was created by God; it sprang from the will and the word of the all-wise Creator. When God began to arrange this world in order, it was shrouded in darkness, and it had been reduced to what we call, for lack of a better name, chaos. This is just the condition of every soul of man when God begins to deal with him in his grace; it is formless and empty of all good things.
Maybe you could explore the imagery of formlessness and void, illustrating how God's Spirit moves over our chaos, ready to create life and beauty. The passage signifies beginning times when God's Spirit was preparing to transform, a foreshadowing of how Christ, through the Spirit, renews and brings life today. Encourage believers to invite God's spirit into the voids of their lives, trusting in His power to create something remarkable out of their mess and confusion.
God can and will do the same for you that He did with the chaos of creation. He can put His Spirit in you and put the chaos into order and make things good just like He during the creation.
Let’s Pray
