Week 1: GOSPEL: s To Be With Him

Heaven & Earth created by Word of God

Before something is made it starts in the mind as an idea and then we use our hands to fashion it into something wonderful. We use what is existing. God creates ex nihilo.

Passage: , , , ,

Thesis: God is truth and this truth is what fashioned the heavens and the world.

No one was present when God created. The story of beginnings was shared with Moses at Mount Sinai. We understand the creation of the world from God’s perspective.

Trinity existed

God’s perspective is true and eternal. Out of this truth came matter and existence. Truth is discovered but never created and destroyed. Truth comes from God. Our inability to deal with the complexities of life is due to our inability to discover and understand truth.

Trinity is eternal and preexisting. The three were present at creation with distinct roles and unified in one God. The life we receive from Jesus is the same life that brought forth the universe with its diversity of life.

Trinity: God created, Spirit hovered, Jesus brought life and light to darkness.

Questions for Application

What are ways in which we see the different roles of the Trinity today?

What are ways in which we see the different roles of the Trinity today?

How should we understand truth from our reading?

How are truth and light connected? How does this impact our understanding of salvation?

If Moses recorded the creation of the earth from God how should that understanding impact our view of the beginning of time?

Thoughts on the beginnings of the universe...

- There was evening and morning on first day. This passage dictates the way the Jews viewed their day. It began in the evening and morning the first day.

The Bible Knowledge Commentary 1:3–5

1:3–5. The pattern for each of the days of Creation is established here. There is (a) the creative word, (b) the report of its effect, (c) God’s evaluation of it as “good,” (d) at times the sovereign naming, and (e) the numbering of each day. Regarding the word day (yôm) several interpretations have been suggested. (1) The days of Creation refer to extended geological ages prior to man’s presence on earth. (2) The days are 24-hour periods in which God revealed His creative acts. (3) They are literal 24-hour days of divine activity. In favor of the third view is the fact that the term yôm with an ordinal (first, second, etc.) adjective means 24-hour days wherever this construction occurs in the Old Testament. Also the normal understanding of the fourth commandment (Ex. 20:11) would suggest this interpretation.

God’s first creative word produced light. The elegance and majesty of Creation by decree is a refreshing contrast with the bizarre creation stories of the pagans. Here is demonstrated the power of God’s word. It was this word that motivated Israel to trust and obey Him.

A day for jews is nightfall to nightfall. The calendar is not solar but set through lunar rotation so it has to be adjusted. Day and night were not set in place until the fourth day. We understand the passage of time based on solar rotations. I would suggest that the Bible understands time based the passage of a sequence of events. The two are different. At the time of the recording of Genesis it would not have been set that time was recorded on rotational view of the earth around the sun but more on a lunar cycle of evening to evening and crop rotation based on the seasons.

: “according to its own kind”

this phrase speaks against an evolutionary process.