Genesis 1:6-
Notes
Transcript
Intro:
Intro:
Coming up to speed from Genesis 1… this all starts with a statement..
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1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
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The word beginning refers to… the beginning of an event… of time.. or of an act. - It might refers to the beginning of all things excluding God Himself, IF… verse one stands as a prologue to the events that follow in verse 2…
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WE COULD SEE IT THIS WAY…
In the beginning of all time… God created the heavens… -that is, the ‘above space’… the universal void where there will soon be stars and planets… - or, by ‘heaven’s’ it could refer to ‘the spiritual realm where God dwells’…
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And by earth… it could mean… the this thing that is w/o form and void… that we find in verse 2.
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This space between verse one and two is called by some, “the gap theory”… which, based on how much speculation exists in this theory, can be a fitting possibility.
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Some say… the earth was inhabited between verse one and two.. and God destroyed that earth and covered it in a flood… like He would do again in chapter 6. There are many problems with this idea..
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First off… if this were true… then God also destroyed the sun that this planet first orbited around, but preserved it from utter destruction… and merely flooded it.
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The main problem here is… this is a theory that is partially deduced from fossil records. This is a way to justify the billions of years and to explain dating that goes back billions of years.
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I cannot, and will not… get into the science of creation or the fossil record… because Genesis is not scientific account. It is an ancient description, used in ancient terms, to explain the creation of our world. And we will do our best, to look at it, and understand it in this context.
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The other big problem with the gap theory, in that it reports a previous world of life… is that the Bible teaches us, that death did not enter the world until there was sin.
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However… this does not mean that there wasn’t a gap. - We know that the first recorded event of creation was in verse 3… the formless earth pre-existed that. We don’t know how long. It makes sense that there was a gap… even as it makes little sense that life previously existed here.
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Also, the record of creation, sin, life, death… and all of that, begins within the confines of our recorded event of creation. If there was life on this planet before Genesis 1:2… we are not told about it… and therefore… it’s not part of our story… and therefore, it’s probably not any of our business.
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The word beginning, most likely refers to the beginning of an event… and that event, is the creation story which begins in verse 3.
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Our God, who is a three in one being, pre-existed this event for all eternity… and it’s likely that there are also a multitude of heavenly host… or created, ‘elohim’… who exist in the supernatural realm.
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Verse 2 sets the stage… There is darkness and there is ‘the deep’. The people of this time would have interpreted that as chaos and disorder. It was, truly darkness and it was, truly… the deep… - But when a person of this time period considered floods and the ocean, it figuratively meant… chaos to them.
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Right before things began to change… right before the initial miracle in this creation event is recorded… - we find the presence of God’s spirit… hovering… vibrating… flapping… in anticipation...
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Then God spoke… literally saying “Let light be.” - Who or what did He speak to? - This is probably irrelevant… this is probably more about how we think than how God thinks. We think, that words are spoken for communication… For God… this was His main method of creation… He spoke it into being… and it simply became.
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But He did speak this in the presence of darkness and chaos. This would have been significant to the ancient person. Many would say… He confronted darkness and chaos… and commanded the existence, of something that would defeat both of them.
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In fact… the other creation accounts of this time reveal… in Mesopotamian and Ugaritic literature… claim that there was a conflict between the divine and the mythical waters of chaos. Creation came about, as a victory over that chaos…
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The Egyptian story… which we will look at more in depth… states that their main god.. Nun, the creator god.. evolved from, and rose up out of the primordial waters of chaos.
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In our story… the God who is eternal… didn’t come into existence through creation… but He held all the power and all the authority over creation. And in His first act… He took on the darkness… and brought separation and definition.
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We mentioned briefly last week… that the phrase ‘there was evening and there was morning’ - was a figure of speech, which simply spoke of the beginning and the end of an event, or a process.
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6 And God said, “Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” 7 And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. 8 And God called the expanse Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, the second day. 9 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. 10 God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.
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So… in the previous act of creation, God brought separation, order and definition to a place that was dominated by darkness..
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In this act of creation… He is doing the same thing… but this time, He is bringing separation, order and definition to the chaos.
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And yes… this is literally speaking of water… and yes, the ancient people would have recognized that this was water… but they would have also seen this as a message of God confronting chaos.
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One thing we need to understand in Hebrew literature… is that there is a lot of figurative language, and there is a lot of poetry. But, just because something carries a figurative meaning, doesn’t mean it is not also literal.
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People are often uncomfortable with the creation account we are are now reading, because… in the Hebrew, it has some poetic elements to it.
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Some folks bristle when they hear that the word ‘poem’ because they immediately think that it’s a figurative illustration. This is not true. When something is a figurative illustration, it will be obvious, and the poetic essence of the literature will be more certain.
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So… here.. chaos is confronted… - and God brings order to it.
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What does He use? - this thing called an ‘expanse’… - which is also translated ‘heavens’ or ‘sky’ in other parts of the OT. - It’s an interesting word… - It could literally be translated ‘beaten metal plate’… - or ‘vaulted dome’… - It speaks of something that is spread out...
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In this case… the waters that covered the earth were divided… Some remained on the earth in the form of the deep… and some was carried up above the expanse that God created.
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This created a unique climate for the earth… some have proposed that the entire planet was like… a giant tropical greenhouse.
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In vs. 8… God called this vaulted dome… ‘Heaven’. - Which isn’t referring to the spiritual realm where God dwells… which is how we would usually interpret heaven..
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This speaks of ‘the sky’… - The OT almost exclusively calls it ‘heavens’ … but in a few cases… it interprets this word as ‘air’… whenever it says, ‘birds of the air’… - or when Moses threw the soot in the air that would cause the Boils upon Egypt…
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It’s worth noting… that even after this expanse is broken in chapter 6… and the great flood comes upon the earth… and there is no longer a layer of water above the expanse… it is still called ‘heaven’
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When people looked up… that’s what they saw… a big vaulted dome spread out around the earth… the heaven… the atmosphere… the point of division between our sky, and outer space.
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9 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. 10 God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. 11 And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so. 12 The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.
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this was a busy day. God continued to bring even more order to the chaos… After he divided it in the previous act of creation… he defined it in this act.
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Now… with dry land on the scene… the parts where the water was assigned was named ‘the seas’.
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And God like it.
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In verse 11… God began to do something with the land. Did He create the land with seeds ready to germinate in it… or did He spontaniously bring growing plants into existence. I cannot even guess.
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And these plants… though different… were defined in category. ‘according to its kind’… literally… according to it’s category. - a Kind is different than a ‘species’… a kind or category refers to something with the same ancestral gene pool.
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A species could arise when a population is isolated and inbreeding occurs. By definition, a species is not a ‘kind’ but a further partitioning of an existing ‘kind’.
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So far… we have plants growing… we have day and night defined… but we don’t have the sun, the moon or the stars. - This lets us know… that light in and of it’s self, as the raw created material spoken by God… is sufficient to do what we fully depend upon the sun to do…
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14 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 and for seasons, and for days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. 16 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. 17 And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, 18 to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.
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Now.. we already have a separation of day and night… but now, it has more definition… now… there will be lights in the expanse of the heavens… - We also get the moon and the stars.
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Since the time frame of light and dark… day and night as already been established… these created elements can just plug into creation and take their place…
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A lot of people go out of their way to criticize the order of creation and attack it for being un-scientific. But this wasn’t written to satisfy our scientific knowledge. This was written to declare God’s glory and to speak unique messages to the people of this day.
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For instance… the stars, the sun and the moon... came along later… and they serve in a role as ‘signs’ for ‘seasons’ and for ‘days and years’. - A person could track the number of sunsets… the placement of the stars and the phases of the moon… and record dates and seasons accordingly.
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These things… act like… hands on a clock… as signs, or indicators in the sky.
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But, the Babylonian and other ancient people of this time would have had a different view. - To them, these stars were not mere luminaries… but they were animated beings who were associated with their gods.
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These stars represented something huge to the ancient person. They were deities that controlled things… that created things… that were in charge of human affairs.
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But now… they are simply demoted to ‘light bulbs in the sky’.
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20 And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.” 21 So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” 23 And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day. 24 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.” And it was so. 25 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.
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God is establishing a pattern… He makes the container, before He makes the contents… He made darkness and chaos… and put light and order into it. He made a system of light and darkness, day and night, and He plugged that sun and moon and the stars into that system.
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He made dry land… and put plants and trees upon it..
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He made the oceans… and he made land with plants on it… so that He would put sustainable life in both places.
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Swarms of smaller life… and then great sea creatures in the water… birds in the sky… animals on the land… according to their category…
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and once all of this life is established… God would create something else… He would create man… to have dominion over all of these things… - But we are going to talk about the creation of man next week.
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At this point… I want to turn our thoughts to another creation story.
… As I mentioned earlier… other ancient people groups had stories of creation that were similar… These are found in Ugaritic literature, Mesopotamian literature… and in Egyptian literature..
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The all start the same… with the deep… the primordial waters…
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And they all have similarities… but the Egyptian story has some distinct similarities..
And we will see, in their creation story… something revealing about this creation story.
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We will find, as we study through the OT… that some things are written as direct jabs at other religions. They might have their religious story… but the writers of the OT responded under the inspiration of the HS… by flaunting the greatness of Yahweh… over the gods of the other nations.
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One of the most prominent forms of this… that repeats itself in the OT… has to do with a cycle of stories that pagan religions used to worship Baal, and tell the story of Baal. It is called ‘The Baal Cycle’…
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We get these stories from ancient tablets… recovered in Syria… from the Ugarit people… who died out about 1200BC. They wrote extensively about their religion and their worship of a god named Baal Hadad.
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The stories… the verses… and the descriptions about Baal were commonplace knowledge in the ancient world. The stories gave Baal specific descriptions and specific names.
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The OT writers.. many times over… intentionally use descriptions and names from the Baal Cycle… to describe God. - One of the most thorough examples is from Dan. 7...
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The Baal Cycle says:
El, the aged high God, is the ultimate sovereign in the council
Daniel 7 says: The Ancient of Days, the God os Israel is seated on the fiery, wheeled throne.
The Baal Cycle says:
El bestows kingship upon the god Baal, the Cloud Rider
Daniel 7 says: Yahweh, the Ancient of Days, bestows kingship upon the Son of Man who rides the clouds…
The Baal Cycle says:
Baal is king of the gods and El’s vizier. His rule is everlasting.
Daniel 7 says: The Son of Man is given everlasting dominion over the nations. He rules at the right hand of God.
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These kinds of examples are all over the Bible… and when the ancient person heard these descriptions from Daniel 7, Isa. 19:1, Deut 33:26, Ps. 68:33, Ps. 104:3, and many others… they knew what was going on..
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the most prominent expression of this is the name ‘Cloud Rider’… - There are many times in the Bible, where Yawheh is described as ‘coming on the clouds’… and every time you see that… it’s a jab at Baal worship.
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It’s an expression of superiority and it is literally meant to be-little the false god of Baal.
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I say all this… to bring up the Egyptian story of creation.
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There are strong parallels beyond Egypts story of creation, and our story of creation… and many scholars believe… that our story, the superior, pure and true story… was written in a way to … express superiority and be-little the story of the Egyptians.
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The Egyptians had 4 stories of creation… but they all followed a pretty similar pattern.
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They both start with
Pre-creation condition- life-less chaotic watery deep. - So far.. this is pretty similar to all the ancient stories of creation.
In the Egyptian story… from the waters.. which to them, is a god called Nun… emerged.. or came into being, the god Atum… who would be the creator god. It says… the breath of Atum moved on the waters… But in our story… the Spirit (breath) of God hovered over the water… Our God didn’t have to come into being. Our God has always existed.
In the Egyptian story… there was the appearance of a supernatural light when Atum was generated.. - But our God spoke light into being.
Then… the Egyptian story has the Emergence of hill in the midst of the water… or in the midst of the god Nun.. -But the Bible has the creation of the firmament in the midst of the waters.
The Egyptian story has a similar separation of the waters… but for them, the god Nun was raised over the earth and the sky god Shu was created. - In the Bible… God simply separated the waters with the power of His Word. .
The Egyptian story speaks of a heavenly ocean being created … and that heavenly ocean is a god named Nut… -The Bible ascribes the creation of this simply to the powerful act of creation by God.
The creation of humans in the Egyptian story is also interesting… they spontaniously appeared when the tears of Atum hit the soil of the earth… - But in the Bible, God created Humans in His image with great purpose and intent.
The Egyptian story sets the Sun to have dominion over the earth… but The Bible creates God’s imagers to have dominion over it..
In both accounts… - THE CREATOR FIGURE… COMPLETES the activity and rests in satisfaction.
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There are, remember… 4 versions of this story in Egypt… - Some of the contrasts are more profound.
In one Egyptian day… god’s, statues, cult sites, and food offerings are created… - while on that same day in the Bible.. Man, as God’s divine image… food for man to eat… and the call to have dominion were created..
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Basically… here’s the summary of all this…
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Genesis 1 is believed to be a literary polemic (attack on someone or something)… designed to refute ancient Near Eastern creation mythology… specifically… it appears to be pointed directly at Egyptian mythology in particular.
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It was an attack against ancient beliefs that drew people away from Yahweh… - yes, it was written to tell us the story of creation… - But it appears, as if it was also written to declare Yahweh’s superiority over the Egyptian, Mesopotamian and Ugaritic beliefs of the day.
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Now… Let’s conclude with a big question… which came first… the chicken or the egg?
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There are many similar stories in the Bible… and the ancient world that the Bible was written in the midst of…
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Common stories of creation..
Common stories of the flood...
Common belief in a supernatural divine counsel
Common stories surrounding the nephilim… or the watchers… who were the offspring of certain fallen elohim and the daughters of man…
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You might ask… How is it… that so many different religious and social groups share very similar stories?
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I think the answer is pretty simple.
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I imagine the creation story started quite early… maybe even shared with Adam and Eve by God directly… - And for generations… it was passed down, from person to person…
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As that story went into different places and different nations… it took on a different flavor.
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Just look at what our modern culture has done to re-define Christianity in the past 100 years....
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It’s not hard to imagine… how these stories could bend themselves to the cultures they moved into.
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Also.. major events… like world wide floods and giants… wouldn’t go un-noticed by other nation… As these events were witnessed… stories, explanations, and traditions arose.
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For us… it becomes an issue of faith… - Which came first? Which story bears the most weight? Which version is most significant. And I think you will find… as you study through the entirety of the Bible… that you will see how perfectly and intricately God’s plan is… and how perfectly it is fulfilled in Christ.