And it Was Good

It’s always a good day when we publicly read God’s and preach the truth. We are blessed beyond measure. Let’s pray together before we do both of those things.

Pray

God goes by many names in the Bible. Jehovah, El Shaddai, Adonai, Elohim are a few. The name God declares for Himself to His servant Moses is “Yahweh.” The word Yahweh not only is God’s name, but it stands for who God is. The word Yahweh is mimics the sound of inhaling and exhaling breath. Breathe in, “yah-” and breathe out, “weh.”

The name chosen by God to represent Himself makes total sense. It speaks to His ever-present nature, referred to as His omnipresence. It speaks to the necessity of God, as he is the one who created and sustains all things. He is the breath of life. And it is by God, and by His power, love, and perfect plan that He created man and woman and instills in us the breath of life.

When God calls Himself Yahweh, He communicates His involvement with Creation. He is necessary. Have you tried living without air in your lungs? It won’t work for very long. Have you ever accomplished any task, made any thought, without the presence of breathable air in your lungs?

By His own name, God communicates to those who listen that it is because of Him that we have life and that we are sustained. The age old questions of “where did I come from?” and “Why am I here?” and “where am I going?” Are answered by the breath of life God put into your lungs. You’ve come from Him. You are here because He found joy and purpose in you. God has prepared a place for you to live and worship Him.

The Bible is not a book of tales. It is not a book allowing alternative interpretations. As we who are indwelled by the Holy Spirit open the pages of the Bible, we are reading God’s own account of human history. Not only our history, but it reveals our purpose and our outcome. You want to know God’s will for your life? Spend time reading His Word, digesting its truth and God will reveal to you things you didn’t know existed. It’s not by a secret knowledge that we attain later on. All of these amazing details are in a language that you can read and listen to.

The Bible is not a book of potentiality. It is not a concept of what could happen. It’s genuine. It’s real. The words of the Bible have been proven true again and again, and as more research goes into the accounts of the Bible others are beginning to see what faithful Christians have known all along. The Bible is a reliable source of history.

God used ordinary men, led by the Holy Spirit, to supernaturally document and preserve the texts of the Bible. As we read its words we pay mind to the grammar of the original authors. Theirs was the language God used to reveal and document great and wondrous things.

The book of Genesis is the very first book in the Bible. It’s quite the important book. Right out of the gate a lot of our presumptions about God’s Word can be challenged by skeptics whose hearts haven’t been radically transformed by the work of Jesus on the cross. Immediately we find a narrative of God’s creation of the universe, and specifically His creation of the earth and everything on it.

Let’s read Genesis 1:1-26 to start,

1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 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. 3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. 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. 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. 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. 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. 26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

Genesis chapters one and two document the very first days of creation. According to the passage we just read, God invented things such as: the universe and everything in it; He created light; He created the sun and the moon; He created the atmosphere; He created the sky, heaven and water; He created land, seas, plants, night and day, sun and moon; sea creatures, winged creatures, creepy crawly creatures and beasts of the earth. All of them were made in kind, to take after their own kind. God made man and woman.

There are implications of what God has made. Before God created the universe, there was nothing. The universe, the earth, was without form. It was void. Nothing existed except for God, who refers to Himself as a plurality. He speaks to Himself as He says, “Let us make man in our own image” in 1:26. When God created the universe He created time, language, and the laws of nature included in physics. He created math, numbers, angels and the invisible attributes that humans cannot fathom or even be curious as to exist. He created those far off galaxies and planets that we have yet to see and discover. And even that isn’t a limit to what God created. He created the space that is the space between planets and stars. And yet He Himself was none of these things. He exists as spirit without beginning, and without end. He created a universe, and He operates within the universe, but is not bound or limited by it.

Each day that goes by is a literal 24 hour period. The hebrew word for “day” used in Genesis chapter 1 is “yom” (יוֹם). That word refers to the literal day and night cycle of a single day. What we know to be a 24 hour cycle. God made animals that reproduced according to their kinds on a couple days of creation. This is really hard to swallow from the modern, secular worldview. You see we approach the Bible as God’s literal Word. There is no worrying about my truth, your truth, their truth. The Bible presents itself as just the truth. We here believe that it is. That’s what it means to be part of FCCH. We believe the Bible is God’s Word and it contains information with authority on how humans are to live as God’s creation. When you understand that we are dealing with the God who created all things with His breath, by speaking it into existence, you start to understand how it did not take millions upon millions of years for animals to evolve, for continents to drift, and people to come into existence. When you recognize God as being all powerful, who is not of this universe, who is all knowing and loving, then of course God could have created animals with enough genetic variables to produce the various species we see in the present day.

May I bring your attention to the sixth day? Specifically verses twenty-six through twenty-eight.

“26 Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28 And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” There is so much confusion. Being a human cannot be defined as easy. For reasons that we will get into next week, this simple statement does not resonate in the hearts of most people. Who am I? You are a child of God, made in His image, meaning you have unique language ability, you have compassion, love, a desire to live in community, the ability to recognize good, you have a soul and not just a body. “Why am I here?” You’re here to live on this earth, watching over it and caring for it; living and working as God intended for you to do so. This one passage takes care of our identity. The most tragically mishandled statement by people in our present day are the verbs of being, the “I am statements.” You are not your profession. You are not a business owner, a teacher, a construction worker, or a shop attendant. You are not gay. You are not straight. You are not bi, LGBTQIA+. What you are is made in the image of God and you are called to be in relationship with Him as you tend to the matters of the earth and caring for it and other people. That’s your purpose, called the Creation Mandate. Have babies, nurture them, subdue the earth, which also includes responsible management of the earth’s God given resources.

Let’s now also read chapter 2:1-3

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 2 And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. 3 So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.

We believe in six literal days of creation followed by one literal day of rest. If God was so powerful, couldn’t He have made all the world in one day? How does an all powerful God need rest? Point taken. An all powerful God could have completed creation in a single instant, with one thought. And yet He didn’t. And yes, God is all powerful and doesn’t need to rest. And yet He did. What God accomplishes by six days of work and one day of rest is give an example to the first man and the first woman of the way they go about working and resting. Working six days, resting for one. God doesn’t need rest, and he designed humans to need it. The rest on the sabbath day, that means the seventh day of the week, is an integral part of life for God’s chosen people and God designed it to be a day set aside for rest and worship.

For our last reading from the passage this morning, let’s turn to Genesis 2:18-25

18 Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” 19 Now out of the ground the Lord God had formed every beast of the field and every bird of the heavens and brought them to the man to see what he would call them. And whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name. 20 The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. 21 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” 24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. 25 And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

Once again, we boldly stand on the foundation of God’s Word. We believe what it says. We believe that God made us for a purpose, in His image. We believe He created all things in six days and started the timeline of human history. We also stand firm in the face of opposition, those who would seek to reinterpret the Bible and discredit its original claims. We stand firm in the face of those in our country who say that marriage ought to be defined as more than just man and woman. From the start, from the very beginning, God created man and woman, Adam and Eve. From the very beginning they were called man and wife. So, that’s how we also understand marriage. Even applying our minds to the physical, biological aspect of the issue. Male and female fit. There is no other combination that creates life or sustains life. There is no combination of man and man, woman and woman that fits so naturally to create life.

I’ll tell you this, church. If you’re ever curious about what someone believes in regard to humanity, life, sin, love, and God, then there’s no better place to start asking them questions than from Genesis chapters one through three. The way a person handles, interprets and believes about these three chapters sets the stage for how they will handle and believe about the Bible and the rest of the world. You can know how a person sees the world, that is, you can discern a person’s worldview by how they handle the literal six days of creation. You can know a person’s worldview by how they think about the relationship that God created between Adam and Eve. At FCCH our utmost priority is being people of and for God’s Word. We take seriously what Yahweh speaks to His children. I hope you’re here for that. If you’re not here for that, I hope you stick around. Next week we will investigate the greatest tragedy to ever befall God’s creation, and how a marvelous God uses it to show His power, grace and love.

Feel free to talk to me after church.

Closing Prayer