Intro To Genesis

*I’ve created a Faithlife site that you can join. It’s at Faithlife.com, you can search for Strawberry Mountain Christian Fellowship or If you like our Facebook page, there are links there where you can join. I create an e-Bulletin each week there that you can get, I try to keep it up to date with the prayers for the week and events. I also have been publishing the teachings so if you miss a week you can keep up.

*If Dewey:: we will have another kid fun time after service today, kids of all ages are welcome to hang out upstairs for some games and fellowship with Dewey Alger.

*Last week I talked about believers each having a spiritual gift if not many and so if you have prayed about that and God has put an area of service on your heart see me after service and we can get you going on something that you feel led to do. We are instituting background checks just to make sure that our servants in this church are safe around kids. You know having a criminal background doesn’t mean you can’t serve, but we would like to talk openly between you and I to see if serving the Lord is a safe place for you and the fellowship.

*This week I’m going to get some bids on a safe playground surface to cover the concrete out back and then we will try to move forward on getting a playset for the kiddos.

*The signup cutoff for the Valentine dinner is February 4th, the cost is $40 per couple which includes a catered dinner from the Snaffle bit and dessert. You can pay by check in the dropbox in the back or if you pay by cash, attach a note to it so we know it’s for the dinner. It would also be helpful to signup on our facebook page using the google form so that we know you’re coming and order enough food. If you don’t use internet tools we also have a signup sheet on back table by the donation box.

*And speaking about the donation box in the back, you know we don’t collect a formal offering in this church and we didn’t do that at my previous church either. I believe that giving is between you and Lord and you shouldn’t feel pressured to give, I only bring it up because I want you to know that if you have a heart to give and support this ministry, that’s one way you can do that.

If you’ve also noticed we have a new coffee vendor out of Baker city, we are now serving Sorbenots Coffee so we hope you enjoy that and we also purchased some tea if you are not into coffee

*This week we want to lift Tom and Susan Hutchison up in prayer.

Intro to Genesis

It’s been said that if you can believe the first sentence of the Bible you should have no problem with the rest of it. I believe that to be true and because of that Genesis is really a foundational book because it explains so much about who God is, how things began.

Genesis is a book of beginnings where we see first mention of the creation of the universe. First mentions of mankind, The original sin, The first mention of God’s plan to save mankind from sin. The first methods of agriculture and leisure. First mentions of music, and unfortunately the first murder. Genesis doesn’t hold back any punches when it describes and colors the shortcoming of man. Peoples sins are mentioned as much as their faith and good deeds.

Genesis teaches us about God’s sovereignty as well as man’s choice to be obedient and follow him. Genesis shows us how the various people groups spread out to develop into the current people groups or nations that we know of today especially the nation of Israel which was the people group that God chose to deliver the Messiah to the people of earth. There are many more firsts and beginnings that we will look at as we go through the book of Genesis.

Creation

Adam and Eve

Noah

Patriarchs

Does God have a beginning?

Does the Bible teach Evolution?

What does The Bible teach about the age of the universe?

Why did God create man?

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

How was The Nation of Israel formed and why did God Chose them?

Genesis is a book of beginnings where we see first mention of

Genesis 1:1–5 NKJV

1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. 3 Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. 4 And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness He called Night. So the evening and the morning were the first day.

1st Day of Creation

In The Beginning.

The Hebrew word for Beginning comes from the root word that means first, or firstfruits.

The New King James Version Chapter 15

But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.

The New King James Version Chapter 21

I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End

The New King James Version Chapter 21

Revelation 21:6

6 And He said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End.

The New King James Version Chapter 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.

The Preincarnate Work of Christ

3 All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made. 4 In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.

The first 3 words in our Bible are so important because we see the eternal work of God right from the beginning. So to answer the question, ‘Did God have a beginning?’ The answer is no. There is nothing in scripture that would suggest that God had a beginning. In fact scripture tells us from beginning to end that God is an eternal being.

This no doubt is very difficult to understand, our brains really can’t comprehend eternity.

Did God have a beginning?

what I appreciate about these 3 words is that the Bible gives an explanation about the beginning. That’s not to say that everyone is going to be pleased with that answer, but it no doubt addresses that God was there in the Beginning and he created it all with the words of his mouth.

Now science has tried to explain the creation of the Universe by The Big Bang Theory. I’m sure you’ve all heard of it, but if you don’t know the details, it’s summed up like this. All the matter in the universe was compacted into an infinitely small point that exploded in rapid expansion sending material and energy out into the Universe. So that’s where all matter comes from.

When I was in college at Boise State, I had a couple science classes that I challenged the professors on. One, was this theory of the big bang. Now at that time I wasn’t walking with the Lord but I knew that God was the cause of the creation of The universe. He said that because this all exploded out of an infinitely small point of energy, that over billions of years, all of this energy could form planets etc. Now what I quickly realized is that a belief like that takes a lot of faith, more so than the existence of God.

My Chemistry professor was similar but he knew that science couldn’t explain things. I went into his office one day to get an explanation on how an electron could disappear from one area of an atom and reappear in another area. My professor grinned and said, ah that’s a question for your philosophy class or religious studies.

I don’t intend to dog on science because science has it’s place in our learning and trying to understand our world. The problem becomes when people believe that science can answer all the questions in life or that science itself becomes a religion. This is my opinion but it seems like it take more faith to believe in a big bang than it does to trust in a creator.

(4th word) In The Beginning God.

The word for God here is Elohim which for you Hebrew students, you know when a Hebrew word ends in ‘im’ it denotes a plural word. So a literal translation of the word would be gods. It is meant to be used to speak of the one true supreme God - YHWH.

Why is God’s name used as a plural word?

First of all we have to address the other question that might come to our minds.

Are there multiple Gods?

The answer to that is no. At least in the strict sense. God does acknowledge that people make gods out of things such as idols, loves, passions, desires and idolizing self. But there are no other supreme being such as God himself.

The New King James Version Psalm 19

The heavens declare the glory of God;

And the firmament shows His handiwork.

The New King James Version Chapter 20

You shall have no other gods before Me.

The New King James Version Chapter 43

Before Me there was no God formed,

Nor shall there be after Me.

so we know there is only one supreme creator and that’s Jesus Christ. So the plurality comes from the fact that God is triune in nature. God is three distinct persons but one God. So when we use the word Elohim we technically don’t mean God’s but God but we have the Hebrew root word that supports the idea of more than one person in the Godhead.

This is the doctrine of the Trinity. We don’t see the actual word trinity used in scripture but the truth is taught all throughout scripture starting right here. Father, Son and Spirit in one.

How do we explain the Trinity?

Well we don’t. How can we fully fathom it? The Bible teaches it but how can we truly wrap our minds around it? Consider eternity, how can we explain that? How can we fully fathom eternity. It’s hard to image it isn’t it?

Chuck Smith said “Never trade what you do know for what you don't know”

That is, even though I can’t understand the Trinity, I can still understand Characteristics of God from what he has revealed of himself in his word. I can’t fully fathom eternity, but I can understand the concept that after I die I will live again.

I had a Bible study leader that used to always joke in a tongue in cheek manner and when big things would come up in the word he would often say “Well I guess God is bigger than we previously imagined”

I am so glad that God is hard to understand, I’m glad that he is awesome mysterious being that has all the power to create, that has a nature that I can’t fully comprehend, that lives outside of time and at the same time loves me and calls me his own.

Because of all these things he is worthy of our worship, how can we not own it all unto him? He created everything and he also redeemed it when we destroyed it. Our God is an awesome God.

Now given the complex nature of our God he also desires a relationship with you. As we go through Genesis we will see this unfold. Since we are on the topic of how great God is I want to take a brief moment to discuss how he simply want’s you too to live with him for all eternity.

sin, death, forgiveness, death on the cross, resurrection.

16 For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

The New King James Version. (1982). (Jn 3:16). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

(5th word) In The beginning God created.

The New King James Version. (1982). (). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.

God gave us a simple plan of redemption which will also start in Genesis as well, in fact it’s the greatest theme in Genesis.

(5th word) In The beginning God created.

The Hebrew word for create here is Bara. It means to create by supernatural means. Verse one is like a preview, that God created the heavens and the earth, and then in the following verses it goes into detail of how he does that. This word Bara is significant because God creates by using his words as we are going to see.

It’s not a word to get to hung up on though but later in the chapter we are going to see how God fashioned man.

But we know from that God formed (יָצַר, yatsar) Adam from the dust of the earth and in we are told that God fashioned (בָּנָה, banah) Eve from the rib of Adam

AnswersinGenesis.com

The point to creation is that there was a cause to it, it wasn’t random, it wasn’t accidental but rather it was a cause that was imagined in the creative mind of God.

So in contrast with the Big Bang Theory, The creation account solves the issue of where the material came from and what was the cause that started it.

In The beginning God Created the Heavens and the earth.

Hey we might actually make it through a verse today.

The Hebrew word for Heaven can be used to describe the sky, the universe or the abode of God and the angels.

I think it’s significant that it is plural here, because the word is describing that God made the earth and then everything above it. I think that’s the simplest way to describe it.

So verse one gives us the preview of what is to come in the creation order. Since God doesn’t have a beginning, what’s described for us in verse one is the creation of the natural world in which we dwell.

(2) as we jump into verse 2, we see that the earth was without form and void. My take on this is that now we are being told how creation took place. I could be wrong about that, in fact there are different theories why verse 1 and verse two are so different. One of these theories is the Gap Theory.

In a nutshell, The Gap Theory is a theory that there is an unaccounted for amount of time, possibly billions of years in between verse 1 and 2. Proponents of this view use this theory to show that our universe is billions of years old to acquiesce or agree with modern science. What it offers in showing an old universe it lacks in matching the biblical record however.

One argument in favor of the Gap Theory is that the word ‘was’ can also be translated as ‘it came to pass’ or it ‘became’ void. Those definitions are not used as frequently as ‘was’ or simply ‘being’.

One issue with the Gap Theory is that it implies that God had to recreate the earth for some unknown problem, it implies the issue of the earth going form order to disorder and resulting in death to living things far before sin entered into the world and because of this I personally can’t accept this theory.

Why couldn’t God create a universe quickly that appeared old?

What I mean by that and as we’re going to see in the weeks to come, when God created things he made the mature in their initial creation. God made man as a mature man and not an infant, he made plants that were seed barring instead of making seeds, and he made creatures that would reproduce given their kind. So this answers the age old question, that indeed the chicken came before the egg.

The New King James Version Psalm 50

Let the heavens declare His righteousness,

For God Himself is Judge.

So it’s not far fetched at all to think that God would create what we perceive to be an old universe because he wanted us to have a complete universe. He desired for us to have the fullness of what the universe can offer like a heavenly timepiece that we can measure the days, months, and years. He created a stable home for us in which we are at the perfect distance from the sun for the most ideal temperature for man and living things. The point is, creation was designed exactly as he saw fit.

The New King James Version Psalm 97

The heavens declare His righteousness,

And all the peoples see His glory.

The New King James Version Psalm 97

The heavens declare His righteousness,

And all the peoples see His glory.

It’s important for us to not conform God to our world view, but that our world view would be conformed to God’s view. So we have to overcome the temptation to make sure that science perfectly matches what we read in the Bible. Here’s why. God’s word is infallible, science is not. What science has deemed to be law ends up not being law.

For instance, Sir Isaac Newton created the law of gravity, and as a good scientist created a set of experiments to show that gravity always behaved a certain way and never deviated from that thus making it a law. Centuries later, Albert Einstein came along and rewrote the science books based on his research into relativity, in a sense making ‘the law of gravity’ obsolete, or rather there was now a better way to describe and explain the work of what we perceive to be gravity.

Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away.

So in short, I would rather put my trust in what God says than trust what science tells me. This doesn’t mean check out your mind at the door. I believe that God is very logical and clear even though he might not explain things exhaustively. In fact he created us to have logical minds and to use it in learning and solving of problems, but in the end doesn’t it come down to faith? I believe it actually takes faith to think that science is the answer as well, so who is going to win your faith?

(2b) so the term without form and void means there was emptiness, a wasteland, wilderness, useless and empty space. So we get the sense that the earth at this point is useless in it’s form. This very well could have been the creation of the elements, the very building blocks of our known world.

verse 2 describes the earth as dark and flooded at this point. The word for deep here is flood or deluge which isn’t a big surprise because the second part of the verse shows that the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Hovering can also be described as shaking or fluttering. I’m not sure what this means, but when I read it, to me it shows us that God was very active in creation, all three persons of the trinity. The vibrating, fluttering and hovering to me speaks of activity and motion and energy. God was very active in creation.

Dr. Henry Morris III suggests that the Spirit of God was energizing the work of creation for day one.

So The initial creation of God is in place, he has created the elements, he has created matter, time and space or he has created the very dimensions of our universe and now he is going to create the very surroundings that we know today.

Now remember in verse two we saw that there was emptiness and darkness, but now we see in verse (3) that God said “Let there be light” and there was light. Notice how he spoke it into existence. This shows us the value in God’s words. God’s word is powerful, all creation obeys the words of God.

Charles Spurgeon had a sermon in which he preached on day one of creation. Charles showed how earth that was without form and void was like man in his sinful condition and how God enlightens the soul by saying let there be light and that when God enlightens man, he becomes born again or recreated as a new creation. Charles quoted this scripture

[ NKJV] For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to [give] the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

So as we go though these weeks of studying the creation remember that not only was the creation literal but it also is the same kind of work that Jesus want’s to do in you that is making you a new creation. Jesus said that you must be born again to enter into the kingdom of Heaven.

And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness.

(4) And God saw the light, that it was good; and God divided the light from the darkness.

God declared that the light was good, a secondary definition of ‘good’ is ‘better’ that is the light is better than the darkness and so God decided to separate the light from the dark. The idea to divide is to separate or to set apart. What does that remind you of? To be sanctified. God is sanctifying the light. God has declared that light is good. Light being the first thing that God created was called good. Light is used as both a metaphor in scripture to describe that which is pure and good as well in the literal sense.

Light represents the time we spend awake, doing things, happiness, warmth, and sight. God gave a title to the light and he called it day.

Think about how loneliness darkness can be, it’s really the perfect metaphor for depression or loneliness because those emotions are so tide to the experience of the lack of light. Even though darkness is part of the creation as well, God did not call it good. Nevertheless God gave it a name and that he called the darkness night.

(5) so the evening and the morning was the first day. So day one of creation was the creation of light and energy, the very dividing of light resulted in the creation of a day or the definition to what a day is and that is a day consists of a period of darkness and period of light or day.

At this point it isn’t clear what the light source is, it’s possible that the light source is God himself or just that which came forth from God as he spoke it. We actually will see that he creates the stars, planets and sun and moon in day four so this light source is a bit puzzling but given the rest of scripture it doesn’t seem to be the sun as we know it today.

Dr. Henry Morris II, father of HM III, suggests in his book The Genesis Record, that at this point the earth would have taken its spherical shape thus given us the day and night cycle. I suppose that is possible, but I have a small reservation with that, and that’s in the previous days God is still working on the earth as we will see, so I’m not convinced that the earth is a globe at this point in creation, all though I am totally open to the possibility that it is. If the light source was in fact not the sun, then I would think that it’s possible that what ever the light source was could have just as easily faded to produce the night or moved in such a way as night happened, or that darkness came first and then the presence of light sparked the day. It’s a bit hard to say, but regardless of the mechanics of what’s described I don’t wrestle with the truth that God is giving us that in fact the first day consisted of a morning and an evening.

It’s also worth noting that the record of creation is also how the Jewish people measured a day. If you notice in the text, it say the evening and the morning was the first day. So to this very day, the Jewish people recognize the start of a day at sundown concluding the next day at sundown. So the evening comes first and then the morning.

I also believe that these specific word show us that this was a literal day. Similar to the gap theory, many people have wanted to make each day an era of time, making creation look like it was a slow dragged out event that would account for those billions of years that some desire. I know I’ve even thought that that could be a possibility.

If we consider each day to be a long span of time this creates other issues for creation like in day 3 plants were created and the sun was created on day 4. Plants can survive one day without light no problem, but thousands of years, of course not. So I believe that God gave us careful information to dispel some of these theories.

So in closing,

I’m not sure who said it or coined it but it’s a truth, and that’s that I cannot do in a lifetime what God can do in a day. We serve a great, awesome, and powerful God. As we consider what he did in Day one of creation alone it moves us in the power that he possesses.

During creation God looked over his creation and decided that the world needed you, do you know that you are fearfully and wonderfully made the scripture tells us.

Because God saw fit that you should exist and that he would give you you personality and breath life into, he wants to have a relationship with you. If you have not put your trust in Jesus Christ I urge you to do that today. Remember, you must be born again to have eternal life, if you don’t know what that means or if you want to pray to receiver Christ come see me after service.