Creation
Notes
Transcript
Gospel Project S1W1
Gospel Project S1W1
Gospel Project
S1/W1
In The Beginning, God…
Genesis 1:1-25; 1 Corinthians 8:5-6
For the next three years we are going to be learning about Jesus!
But it will look a little different, you see this Book, the Bible has all sorts of different things in it, different people wrote different book, and some people had people write the books as they talked to them, and these authors were spread out over hundreds and thousands of years, they were all in different places, and time, yet this book, this Bible came together and it all points to one thing Jesus.
It all point to Christ!
It is incredible and it is unlike any other book known to man, so we are going to read stories that you are familiar with, stories that you are not, and we will see that all of these stories point to the coming of the Messiah, the one who was to come and came and died on a cross and rose again!
So we start as any good story would start, we start in the beginning….
I want you to try to guess some of the beginning to these books or these movies…. Ready!
- This is my favorite book in all the world, though I have never read it. -The Princess Bride by William Goodman
Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number 4, Privet Drive were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. -Harry Potter and the Sorcerer Stone by JK Rowling
All Children, except one, grow up. - Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie
In a Hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. -Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien
Where’s papa going with that ax? Said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast. -Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White
In a Galaxy far, far away…. Star Wars
There are countless books, some books are great and some a terrible!
But the fact is that there are some book that have stood the test of time.
Lord of The Rings, Tale of Two Cities, Tom Sawyer, The Hatchet, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, maybe you have a few in your mind as well!
What about a book that has survived the test of time for thousands of years, And the beginning of the story, starts right here, In the beginning, God…
The bible opens simply yet dramatically as we are introduced to the greatest reality ever to exist- God.
In Genesis 1:1 we meet God who is simply there.
It doesn’t begin with a large argument about the existence of God because the Bible is His revelation of Himself.
It simply assumes that He has always existed.
Have you ever wondered where God came from?
The answer is that he has always existed.
God is not dependent on anyone or anything for his own existence.
Where as everything else as we will find out, owes its existence to God.
So lets turn to where it all started and we need to realize that God created everything.
GOD CREATED EVERYTHING
GOD CREATED EVERYTHING
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.
Have you every wondered what earth was like in this state?
Dark, without form, void— it is hard to phantom that this is how the world began.
I’m sure that we have all wrestled with the questions how old is the earth or event the science behind creation.
I mean we get this right and if you haven’t it’s okay, but we need to be prepared to give a reason why we believe and understand what we believe.
But anyway, those questions are not what the original audience would have asked.
The writer of Genesis is credited to Moses.
The original audience of the Book of Genesis was the ancient Israelites on their way to the promise land.
So what was the original purpose of Genesis?
The Israelites had been in slavery for years and year in Egypt, and the culture of Egypt was very much the more gods the better!
So you can imagine Moses writing to try to answer the questions the Israelites had such as: Is our God the real God?
Is he the best God?
Is He the most powerful God?
This was a struggle for the Israelites as we will read and discover, they had a hard time believing that their God was the God.
So God wrote Genesis 1 through Moses for those who were wondering.
Saying look the guys the God of your bedtime stories, the God of your fathers, He is the same God who created everything!
For great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised;
he is to be feared above all gods.
For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols,
but the Lord made the heavens.
And to be clear we are no different then the Israelites!
We may be tempted to bow down to a wooden statue, or a golden calf, but our hearts seek other things besides God.
We question is God real?
Does He love me? Is He worth it?
When we have these questions, which is not a bad thing, it is okay to have questions, it is okay to have questions, its okay to do that, however we can not just stay there we need to figure it out, we may have those questions but if we do not run and search out truth we are missing out on increasing our faith.
This passage Genesis 1:1 is a great place to being, here in the beginning! In the beginning, God…
You see when there was nothing, there was God, and that should create a sense of wonder about Him.
Because if we can get this, that God owes His existence to no one and He is in need of nothing or no one, he decided to create everything, including you and me!
This should overwhelm us with a feeling of love that should quench and reject any heart idols we may have!
The next critical point from the creation is that God created everything good.
Starting in verse 3 and all the way through verse 25, God declares that each part of His creation is Good.
GOD CREATED EVERYTHING GOOD
GOD CREATED EVERYTHING GOOD
And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 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. And it was so. And God called the expanse Heaven. 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 he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.
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. 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. And there was 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 and for seasons, and for days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. 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 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 birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.” 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. And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on 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.” 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.
Good, what does good mean?
Why after every single day does God call each step of creation good?
It is morally good?
YES- When God created everything, there was no sin in it.
Was it beautiful and pleasant to the eyes? DUH OF COURSE IT WAS!
I mean you don’t have to stare at a sunset or see the Grand Canyon to see God’s creation as beautiful!
Is it usable?
YES- When God created something and called it good, He is saying it was going what it was intended!
The purpose and design of creation is to declare God’s glory and proclaim the work of His Hands Psalm 19:1
The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.
and to reveal things about God that are invisible to us, such as His eternal power and divine nature (Rom 1:20).
For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
Because of creation, we can clearly see and understand these things.
Let’s think about it this way...
If a stranger were to walk in here, no one had meet the guy, there would be certain things about him that we could conclude, but some would still be a mystery right.
Lets Try it, I’m going to throw a picture up there, what can we conclude from this picture
Matt and Hannah
This is a picture of my brother Matt and his Wife Hannah, and their sweet little girl Rori. They were married on May 18, 2019, they are work out crazy people.
Hannah love to golf Golfs, she graduated from IW, she is a nurse and loves what she does.
Matt graduated from Iowa Wesleyan as well, he works at the school as the the dean of students and he is the best brother around!
They both are believers and recently just joined a church in Mt. Pleasant.
You see we can make general conclusions but to really know Matt and Hannah- to know there character, intentions, and will- They would need to come and talk to us.
We could hear their likes and dislikes, his and her background, their life experiences.
We would need to hear them speak, because of picture is silent and no words can come from a picture!
It is amazing that we get to see this God of the universe begin the good work of revealing Himself to us.
He reveals Himself in creation, allowing humanity to know things about the creator just by looking at creation— much like an artist leaves his fingerprints on a work of art. And God could have just left us with that general knowledge.
He did not have to make Himself known, but He did, and He still does.
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
God makes himself known to us and when it is through nature we call it General Revelation— But God also reveals Himself to us a different way as well.
We call this Special Revelation--
And Special Revelation is something that we are going to keep coming back too— especially when we talk about Jesus because through special revelation we can know Jesus personally.
CHRIST CONNECTION
One of the main things we will be looking at through the Gospel Project is how it all connects back to Jesus.
For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”— yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.
Jesus was in the beginning— and when we read passages like this we may be tempted to look back at Genesis 1:2 and say— Jesus is not mentioned here.
But hang on, let’s look again:
If we reread this passage in Genesis 1:2
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.
We might ask, wait we get that the spirit was there but what about Jesus, Jesus is never mentioned in that passage but yet Paul is communicating that Jesus was present.
John 1:1-3, 14 breaks it down like this:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.
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.
Every time we see God speak things into existence, the son is there.
God created everything through His Son, and all things exist and hold together because of the Son.
Creation gives us the general revelation but with all thing being created through the Son and this gives us this special revelation if you will.
You see we can know that there is a God based on creation Romans 1 tells us that, but we have suppressed the truth, we get that, and that would have been enough.
But God sent his son and through the Son we know God’s plan for redemption and certain things about God.
And these to revelations come together in the believer.
In the Christian.
As a human, as a believer we represent humanity.
Because as we will read next time we meet, humans have a special kind of creation, a creation that God looked at and yes this day, day 6 it is VERY GOOD!
There is no other creation in the world that can tell of what God has done and does do, Yeah the sky, stars, and the mountains can display it but every single person we see and encounters is, by nature, showing us something of God Himself.
We have to light the shine!
For all to see, to our family, our friends, teachers, bosses- to everyone and anybody!
Keep sharing your faith, your life.
Keep living for Jesus!
Keep talking about Christ!
Don’t stop don’t ever stop!
