Genesis 1:1 Introduction
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Alright, so tonight we enter into the book of beginnings. Every major doctrine has its beginning in Genesis. In a similar way, we saw their conclusion in our journey through the book of Revelation. Even the Hebrew name for this first book of Moses is “in the beginning” bereshit .
We get the name “Genesis” from the Septuagint, which uses the equivalent Greek word also meaning “beginning.” Genesis gives the beginning of Creation itself; the heavens and the Earth, and the entire Universe.
The beginning of the Oceans, the atmosphere, the fish, the animals, the insects, all plant life. More importantly, the beginning of Man.
We will also see the beginning of Sin and death, and the plan of Redemption and the promise of the Messiah. The beginning of the family, the beginning of Industry, the beginning of farming, the beginning of animal husbandry.
The concept of worship and sacrifice. Not to mention the flood, the where different people groups came from.
The book of Genesis is the story God’s creation followed through a particular family line that leads to a certain man named Abraham. It then focuses on the Abrahamic line through Isaac and Jacob and his sons the 12 tribes of Israel. The rest of the OT is a continuation of the family story to David and ultimately to the Messiah Jesus Christ.
Now as we get into the book its important to note that not all persons born are listed and really only those important to the narrative are tracked.
What Genesis does not do is tell you is where God comes from. All of us have considered or been asked what was before God? Well the simply answer is is that God has always been. He is eternal. So in the creation account God’s existence is assumed. No attempt is made to prove His existence. The bible has much to say about this.
1 The heavens are telling of the glory of God;
And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands.
26 Lift up your eyes on high
And see who has created these stars,
The One who leads forth their host by number,
He calls them all by name;
Because of the greatness of His might and the strength of His power,
Not one of them is missing.
In other words just look up at a starry sky. It is declaring God’s Glory!
Paul wrote about Gods existence in Romans,
18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth in unrighteousness,
19 because that which is known about God is evident within them; for God made it evident to them.
20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.
21 For even though they knew God, they did not honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened.
22 Professing to be wise, they became fools,
Solomon wrote in Ecc;
Ecclesiastes 3:11 (NASB95)
11 He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, yet so that man will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end.
Everyone born has an innate consciousness of God and are drawn to worship.
So tonight we will be discussing an overview of the direction of this study and then take a look a Genesis 1:1.
As is my habit we will be looking at a number of different angles as we approach the scripture. Some may sound controversial, but all we ask is that you hear out the evidence before making a judgement.
Some of the questions we will be asking and exploring are
1. Is there a gap between 1:1 and verse 2?
2. When did Satan fall?
3. What about the Nephilim and Giants?
4. Was Noah’s flood universal or world wide?
5. What is light and where does it come from?
6. What about the dinosaurs?
And many many more.
What I hope to accomplish through this study is to give you an understanding that this book is divinely inspired, even mystical. It begins a story that works it way all through the entire Bible. In the words of Chuck Missler, “the Bible is an integrated message system, 66 books, 40 authors, written over thousands of years by a designer outside of our time domain.”
Most importantly, we hope to help you discovery that this story is all about Jesus Christ. We will take every effort to show you Him in every page. We will even discover the gospel message encoded within the names of the line of Adam. Very cool stuff!!
As we are introducing Genesis tonight I thought you might find some of these things interesting. Did you know that the Torah has codes imbedded in it. The Torah is the first 5 books, aka Pentateuch. Let me demonstrate. First note;
2 It is the glory of God to conceal a matter,
But the glory of kings is to search out a matter.
Handout - A Hidden Torah Secret
That said, there is a type of code that was known to the Ancient Rabbis called “equidistant letter sequences.” The Rabbis found that if you start at the first Tav (like T) and count 49 letters you get a Vav (like O) and count another 49 you get a Resh (like an R) and another 49 letters and you get a Heh (like H) spelling Torah. You might think interesting but that a fluke.
So we check out Exodus and find the same thing. Co-incidence right? So just to be sure we try Leviticus and it doesn't work. So just to be sure we go to Numbers and we finds it works only here Torah is spelled out every 49 letters in reverse.
Now we are curious so we try Deuteronomy, and again Torah is spelled out backwards.
So we have Torah, Torah, --------, Harot, Harot. Now we have to take a closer look at Leviticus and discover that every 7th letter, (Square root of 49) is the Name of God spelled out YHWH.
So what we learn is that the Torah always points to YHWH.
Bible scholars call these codes the fingerprints of God. Maybe your still not convinced!?
Well, some of you are aware that Hebrew like Greek have both Alphabetic and Numeric values.
(look at your handout, Koinonia House - The mysteries of Pi and e)
You might find it interesting that in regard to Genesis 1:1; If you multiply,
# of letters x product of the letters / # words x product of words
You get Pi to the 5th decimal. 3.1415 … Incredible!! They call math the universal language. It’s not surprising that our Creator would reveal Himself through math and the most fundamental mathematical constants.
Pi is the ratio of circumference to diameter.
It gets better, if you take John 1:1 and do same procedure
You get the the value of e . 2.718, to the 5th decimal. e is a mathematical constant in higher math.
The chances of this happen by chance are empirically impossible. If you take this on you will see how much work it must have been for the Ancient Rabbis without computer help.
There are other things like these, we will uncover, that will expose the hand of God in the design of this book.
Now before we get into the actual text its important to talk about who wrote this work. Higher critics today have all kinds of ideas but we can save a lot of effort by noting what Jesus had to say.
13 And behold, two of them were going that very day to a village named Emmaus, which was about seven miles from Jerusalem.
14 And they were talking with each other about all these things which had taken place.
15 While they were talking and discussing, Jesus Himself approached and began traveling with them.
16 But their eyes were prevented from recognizing Him.
17 And He said to them, “What are these words that you are exchanging with one another as you are walking?” And they stood still, looking sad.
18 One of them, named Cleopas, answered and said to Him, “Are You the only one visiting Jerusalem and unaware of the things which have happened here in these days?”
19 And He said to them, “What things?” And they said to Him, “The things about Jesus the Nazarene, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word in the sight of God and all the people,
20 and how the chief priests and our rulers delivered Him to the sentence of death, and crucified Him.
21 “But we were hoping that it was He who was going to redeem Israel. Indeed, besides all this, it is the third day since these things happened.
22 “But also some women among us amazed us. When they were at the tomb early in the morning,
23 and did not find His body, they came, saying that they had also seen a vision of angels who said that He was alive.
24 “Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just exactly as the women also had said; but Him they did not see.”
25 And He said to them, “O foolish men and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken!
26 “Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into His glory?”
27 Then beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, He explained to them the things concerning Himself in all the Scriptures.
Of course there are other examples of Jesus attributing the Torah to Moses.
Now as we get into Genesis 1:1 I want to teach you a little Hebrew. BTW- here is another interesting factoid, Hebrew is read right to left. For us they start at the back of the book!
It is also curious that the all languages flow towards Jerusalem. To the East of Jerusalem languages are read Right to left and west of Jerusalem they are read left to right.
Have you noticed why is Jerusalem always right in the center? I have some ideas on this that we will get to at some point. Suffice to say the Land is very important to God..
So tonight we are going to look at the first three words of the Hebrew text.
Berisheet bara Elohim or In the beginning God created
Berisheet means in the beginning. As we already said that is where the name Genesis comes from.
So when was the beginning? Was it 14 Billion years ago or 6,000 years ago? Current Science says the universe is about 14 Billion years old and the Earth about 4.6 Billion years old. We are not told and no one knows exactly. No one was around then. But trust me we are going thoroughly discuss this in the coming weeks
So I wanted to take your thinking away from the interesting science of creation to the amazing truth of God’s plan of redemption just from this first word.
Video: Is the End of Days Prophesied in the First Word of the Bible? 13:30
Video: Is the End of Days Prophesied in the First Word of the Bible? 13:30
This video is over a hour long it has many interesting things to say. I don’t necessarily agree with his conclusions but its worth watching.
The second Hebrew word is “Bara.” Bara means to create, but not just create. It means to create from nothing. We call this ex-nihilo creation. This word is only attributed to God. Only God can create from nothing.
As a quick aside, in David’s Psalm of repentance, Ps 51 when Davis prays
10 Create in me a clean heart, O God,
And renew a steadfast spirit within me.
The word create is “bara” something only God can do. Give you a new heart!
Now there are two other words used for create, Asah and Yatsar. Asah is the most common and means to create from existing matter, and is sometimes translated “make.”
The third word, YATSAR, is not too common, and is usually translated FORMED, e.g. Gen 2:7, Psa 95:5, Isa 29:16b. The sense of this word is to make or shape something out of existing material, like a potter uses clay to form a pot. In fact the word occurs in certain forms and is translated, POTTER, cf. Isa 29:16a.
The third word from Gen 1:1, is Elohim. We translate this word as God.
The basic meaning behind the name Elohim is one of strength or power of effect. Elohim is the infinite, all-powerful God who shows by His works that He is the creator, sustainer, and supreme judge of the world. “Bring to an end the violence of the wicked and make the righteous secure—you, the righteous [Elohim] who probes minds and hearts” (Psalm 7:9).
Sometimes the word Elohim is shortened to El and used as part of a longer name. El Shaddai, for example, means “God Almighty” (Genesis 49:24); El Elyon means “God Most High” (Deuteronomy 26:19); and El Roi means “God Who Sees” (Genesis 16:13). Personal names of people can include the name of God: Daniel (“El Is My Judge”), Nathanael (“Gift of El”), Samuel (“Heard by El”), Elijah (“El Is Yahweh”), and Ariel (“Lioness of El”) are examples. Place names, too, can contain the shortened form of Elohim: Bethel (“House of El”), Jezreel (“El Will Sow”), and, of course, Israel (“Prince of El”) are examples.
Interestingly, the word Elohim is grammatically plural rather than singular (the -im suffix in Hebrew indicates the plural form). The singular form of Elohim is probably Eloah. What are we to make of the plural? Does the plural form of Elohim imply polytheism? No, the Torah makes clear that God is one (Deuteronomy 6:4). Polytheism is expressly forbidden in the Old Testament.
So here we get our first hint of the Trinity, the triune nature of God. We owe much to the Ancient Hebrews who preserved Gods word as it is; even though in there understanding it didn’t seem to add up.
There are several other hints of the trinity in the OT including when God made man. BTW the word God uses for made is ASAH meaning He made man from the dust of the ground. Notice the verse;
26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
Again, we see the use of the plural with “Us and Our.”
Next week we get into the creation itself. When did it occur and was there a gap? Lots of fun stuff.
Prayer