Just don't know how to read scripture.
They just don't know how to read scripture. And then they, well,
I want to learn how to read scripture. So I'm going to go take a class
on hermeneutics. Guess what happens when you get out of your class
on hermeneutics? You still don't know how to read scripture. You
don't know how to read scripture. So you take another class on
hermeneutics and then you still don't know how to read scripture.
And then you take another class on harmonious. Then you think,
well, maybe it's not harmonious. Maybe it's homiletics. Maybe I need
to present. Maybe it's applied theology. Then I need to learn
to put these things to feet. But ultimately, God has revealed
himself through his word. And he will reveal himself to
children through the hearing and the reading of the word.
And he will reveal himself to smart folks, and to not so smart
folks, and to pretty folks, and to not so pretty folks, and to
people who are able to read, and people who aren't able to
read. And so if what it takes to understand
Scripture requires a classroom, then God has done a very sorry
and poor job of revealing Himself. And so I do believe, because
the Bible attests to it, that the Scripture, the New and Old
Testaments, are sufficient for salvation and also sufficient
in all ways and in everything to teach us everything that God
is revealing about himself in all ways. And I believe that
any person at any age at any time by the Spirit can learn
the deep truths of the Bible. It doesn't take numerology, it
doesn't take anthropology, it doesn't take archaeology, it
doesn't take theology, it just takes a mind opened up by the
Spirit of God and then we learn who God is. We learn who God
is. And one of the biggest disconnects
that we see in the context of the Bible is that people don't
know how to make connections. You've heard me say this a thousand
times over, if I've said it once, that Old Testament theology is
understood, trumped, administered, exposed, exposited by apostolic
authority. Something of that variation.
So in other words, there are a lot of people who are Hebrew
scholars. I'm sorry for them, you know, and I've got friends.
Sorry. I'm talking about y'all. Yes. Talking about my friends. I'm
sorry that you spent, you know, 14 years to study Hebrew and
now, you know, all the cool things about it. That's interesting.
It's no problem, but it doesn't make one better to understand
the Bible. I have friends who have terminal
degrees in Greek. and higher criticism. Sorry,
it doesn't make you able to better understand the Bible. As a matter
of fact, it convolutes the very nature of the simplicity of God.
It convolutes the very nature of the expression of God in the
text that a child alone can understand the fullness of who God is. It
doesn't mean that these things aren't interesting or beneficial
to some degree. I mean, my goodness, if we're
going to have hobbies, let us at least have hobbies that involve the
Word of God, right? But, beloved, I believe that
if we read everything through the lens of Christ, I believe
if we read everything in the Bible, everything in the Bible,
and we know that the Old Testament, especially the Pentateuch, especially
Moses' writing, if we know how all of the Bible is written and
why, we can look through the lens of the cross. We can look
through the lens of redemption. And the purposes of the Bible
are to show God's people the power and the providence of God
in salvation. And that what God decrees and
declares, He determines. And what He determines, He does. And there's no stopping Him.
And that's what the Bible's about. The Bible is about God decreeing,
determining, and doing salvation for His people to the praise
of His glorious grace. It is about showing that even
in the most minute details of DNA, even in the most minute
details of the world and the cosmos that is infinite, we see
redemption. It's redemption. It's about Christ
and His people. Marriage is about Christ and
His people. Creation is about Christ and His people. Judgment
that's about Christ and His people. All the people of the world are
divided into two camps. They have the elect of God and the
reprobate. And God is the one who determines
who is in either camp. And God is the one who determines
how that is revealed. And God is the one who determines
when a sinner comes to know the truth of redemption. And God
has already determined all those things. Beloved, we have a literacy
problem in our culture, a literacy problem. Genesis, we'll go through
the whole book before it's all said and done. We won't stay
here until we're finished, but we'll go through the whole book.
There are 50 chapters in this thing, 50 chapters. And it's
only divided into two things. The first half of the book, well,
not half, The first 11, 12 chapters, 12 is when, yeah, that's when
Abraham comes on the scene. First 11, 12 chapters is God
creating the world and all the peoples of the world for redemption.
In the picture of redemption. How God relates to the world,
how God separates the nothing into something in order and how
God creates people and separates them in something of order so
he can show himself the light of the world in redeeming his
people. And then he specifically out of the world, selects a man
named Abram. And then that's what, you know,
chapter 12 sort of segues into 13 to 50. And 13 to 50 is really
the story of Abraham that opens the door for the rest of the
Old Testament to show us redemption. And so I will tell you that the
whole of the Old Testament in its entirety, in the context
of its narrative, is outlined in the first chapter of Genesis. Just like in John's gospel, everything
that John writes in his gospel, all the narratives that he places
there under the divine inspiration of the Holy Spirit are outlined
in the prologue of the first 18 verses, so are the Old Testament
narratives outlined in the creation account. Now you might think,
well, my goodness, I've read this a thousand times, I've been
reading Genesis Yeah, but what happens when we go to Genesis?
What do we do in our culture? We are not reading with a new
mind. We are reading with a culturally
inept mind. We are reading from an academic,
and I don't even wanna abuse the word like that, but we're
reading from an academic point of view based on some other men
who are very popular and famous who've written a lot of books
about the topic of creation, about the topic of Genesis, and
we think them the experts, and they are telling us things that
we can't see. But we take it in hook, line, and sinker. Oh,
now I know. No, we don't know. Beloved, just because it is inferred
in the context of Scripture, if it is not inferred in a blatant
way, it is not biblical doctrine. It is inference. God is not in the business of
hiding stuff that you've got to be wise enough to see. The
gospel is hidden. And when God the Spirit opens
our eyes, we see the gospel. Then we do grow in our reading
of the scripture. What does it mean to study the
Bible? That means to have the Bible in your eyes. Not a pencil, not a pen, not
a commentary, not a notebook, not a weird old pastor, not anything
like that, but your Bible. But we need to know the gospel.
That's why I always emphasize that we need to be reading the
gospel of John. on an ongoing basis. Every day
of our lives there needs to be some interaction with the gospel
of John and there needs to be some interaction at all times
with the apostles teaching to the church because we are the
gathering here and we're in covenant community together. This isn't
a free will choice like, well, Burger King or McDonald's today,
where are we going to be? No, these are the people who love
the Lord and these are the elders who are teaching the scripture.
And this is the truth that I know to be the Christ of scripture.
And I want to be involved and intimate with these people, good,
bad and ugly. Nothing can separate us from
the love of God. Therefore, there should be nothing that can separate
us from the love of one another. And as the marriage is a small
little tiny microscopic picture of this incredible eternal reality,
till death do us part. Well, that sounds like a cult.
Well, that's what people call Jesus. That's the point, isn't it? That's
the point. So we see this letter. And we
look at it and there's a lot of confusion over Genesis, not
only in the creation, but the fall and all of the different
ways in which people have tried to interpret this critically. And I think you do look at things
critically. You can look at all information, you need to look
at it critically. Without a critical evaluation, but by what standard
do we evaluate? By what litmus test? What is
the answer key? Through what lens are we looking?
No lens? Mind open, mouth open, bottom
open, no pants? I mean, what are we doing here?
The coronavirus is simmering down. Get dressed, folks. We
look through the lens of the gospel of free and sovereign
grace. We look through the lens of the eternal decree of God
who created the world so that he would create a people for
himself and be magnified. That means to be made big, to
be shown and revealed his glory as he really is. That means to
see him hugely for what he really is in the redemption of his people.
So everything in the Bible points to that. So read it from that
point. And the great thing is that James Tiffins doesn't have
to be a scholar in the cultural sense. He doesn't have to know
a lot of stuff if he just reads the Bible. If he reads the gospel
and he reads the letters of the New Testament, then when he reads
the Old Testament, that stuff is gonna come to life like never
before. There's a lot of confusion. Some
people think that Genesis creates the idea of a human kingdom and
the purposes of God was to create a human kingdom. No, it doesn't. It doesn't. Well, it was about
a king, and that's where we get all these different dispute views
and all these different ideas of, you know, what last days
are and all these different strange notions of, you know, is it helicopters
or dragons? What's happening here? We don't
know. Who's gonna win in the end? God has already won. He's
victorious over sin and death because that's what he came to
do. That's what Christ has done.
Some people get confused over Genesis by the fact that they
think, well, there's some creative intention here. There's something
in God's teaching this through Moses so that we could know the
science behind creation. That's got nothing to do with
it. Science to Moses was everything that wasn't on the dirt was heaven.
Everything above the dirt was heaven, and it was mysterious,
and we didn't know anything about it. Now you can buy tickets to
outer space. You can. They're on sale right
now. Go for it. Take a picture, for
the love of all things, of the Earth when you get up there so
we can put the flat Earth people or prove them right, whatever
it might be. Take a picture. We got pictures of toenails on
our Facebook pages, but nobody's been to space who's took a picture
of the sphere yet. It's just a joke. You're like,
what the heck? Sermon's done, let's pray. Some
people look at Genesis as scientific evidence for the existence of
God. It's not the point. It's not the point. And the more
that we grow and the more that we understand, do you realize
we think in our day that we have discovered the sub-particles
of all things? We think that we have been able
to see the most minute details of all things created. We think
we're the smartest generation ever. But we're not. We're done
with the bag of hammers, y'all. Because God has not revealed
himself to us in the fullness of all things yet. You want to
see what's at the center of DNA? God Almighty and His decrees
and word. That's amazing, and I'm enamored by it. I'm enamored
by motion and power and force. I'm enamored. I love it. I bog
down in it. I'm enamored by the idea of time
as a construct. and that it actually has something
to do with weighing down on us. And I'm glad I didn't do many
or any drugs as a young guy, because I probably would have
never come out of it. But that's not what Genesis is about. Genesis
is not even about scientific proof of creation. It's not here
to parallel science. It's not the point. God isn't
wanting to prove himself in any way, except to show himself in
every way. and the redemption of his people.
So the whole of the Bible then, if I could just be so bold, is
about election. The whole of the Bible is about election.
It is about God's electing grace. Because without God's electing
grace, he would have never revealed himself to anything, and he does
not need to reveal himself to anything. There would be nothing
to see God if God had not decreed to elect a people for salvation. So the whole of the Bible is
about election. God creates a people for his own glory, saving them
from the chaos and the death and the darkness and bringing
them to himself, to his life, to his glory, to his love, to
his grace. And there is no other narrative or purpose in the Bible.
There's no other reason that it was written. This is it. Otherwise,
if there is another purpose, man and his intellect are necessary
for the revelation and the understanding of God, as I said already. And
that's not the case. And if we get the Bible wrong,
we get the Lord Himself wrong. We get God wrong. And if we get
God wrong, chances are we could be getting the gospel wrong. That's at worst. At best, we
could be applying things wrongly on the burdens and the backs
of our brothers and sisters to the point where they are not
free in Christ. You see how easy it is? So what's wrong with that? Shape them up a little bit, because
their joy is gone. Their freedom is gone. They can't
worship. Hope is in the balance. Do you realize that the ultimate
manifestation of God being glorified in our lives is that we are free
and we have joy? Without fear and without doubt,
without frustration, in the context of this wicked generation in
which we live, and the world which crashes down upon us, and
the pain and the suffering and the frustration that piles upon
our hearts and plates every single day. God is not glorified in
anything except when we rejoice in the midst of all things. And
if we get the Bible wrong, then we're getting confused. If we
equate the narrative of Israel as an application to the New
Testament church and what he or what she must do in the context
of being approved by God, then we are losing ground in the joy
of the gospel. Well, as you read this text this
morning, there's a lot of words. There's a lot of words that just
stand out in this text. And some of the words I want
you to just listen for. I want you to listen for the word God.
How many times that we hear the word God in this text? And the
word God is not a name. It's Elohim. It's the idea of
a high one, the highest of all things. That's what God means. So if God is the highest of all
things and nothing can be above God or that would be God, nothing
could be equal to God or that would also be God. We see the
persons of the Trinity in that context. But keep in mind that
we hear the word God a lot. We hear the word darkness and
light a lot. We're going to hear the word
blessing. We're going to hear the word image. We're gonna see the
idea of perfection. We're gonna hear the word good
and made and God said. And if I had time, and I am not
a Hebrew scholar, but I have friends who are and they have
written a lot of cool tools, not that it matters, but there's
some really neat stuff that go into the Hebrew writing of Genesis.
That when Moses penned it, there are some ways in which the Hebrew
people wrote to solidify perfection in a poetic way. And there's
a lot of things that show perfection, like the number three, the number
seven, the number nine, the number 12, and expressions of those
numbers, the factors, the sums, the products of those numbers.
And if we have time, maybe I'll talk about it in the days to
come or the weeks to come. But for today, let's move on
to the text. In the beginning, God created
the heavens and the earth. In the beginning, God created
the sky and the dirt. the atmosphere in the land. That's
what that literally says. 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. 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 day, 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 be separate from the waters, separate the waters from the
waters. And God made the expanse and separated the waters that
were under the expanse and 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 dry land appear. And it was so. And 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. And 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 for 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 water swarm
with swarms of living creatures and let birds fly above the earth
across the expanse of heavens. So God created the great sea
creatures and every living creature that moves with which the water
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 creeps
on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was
good. 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. So God created man in His own image, and in the
image of God He created them. Man and woman, male and female,
He created them. 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. And God said, look, I have given you every
plant yielding seed that is on the face of the earth and every
tree with seed and its fruit. You shall have them for food.
And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens
and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that
is the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.
And it was so. And God saw everything that he
had made and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and
there was morning on the sixth day. Chapter two. Thus the heavens
and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. 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. 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."
And I think that should go with chapter 1. And here we have the creation
account. Here we have Moses, by the Spirit of God, writing
the beginnings. the beginnings of all things,
the beginnings of all existence, the beginnings of life, the beginnings
of purpose, the beginnings of order, the beginnings of redemption,
and then the histories of people so that it could show us God's
sovereign power over all that He's made. There's a popular
idea amongst many professing believers even about the freedom
of the will. The decisions of man, how they
impact the world, you know? And I've probably seen every
time-jumping movie that's ever been written, even the bad ones. For weird, strange reasons. There's
always this butterfly effect, there's always this thing, you
tell this, you see this, you sneeze over here, it's gonna
cause a havoc, it's gonna mess up timelines. Well, folks, there's
one thing that I guarantee you is that there's not another James
Tippin sitting at another timeline somewhere. Because you're talking about
chaos, the world would go upside down. What about you? And the decisions
we make on this earth, while they do have consequences, while
they are free in some degree, because we all dress the way
we're dressed. We all have our hair the way we have our hair.
But even then, psychologically, I can prove to you that that
was not a free choice. As an illusionist, Out of all my children,
only my six-year-old, seven-year-old wants to be an illusionist now.
But she's ready to go on YouTube and trick Penn and Teller. A month in, she's an expert.
But can we always say the right thing to cause you to think the
things that we want you to think? We can give you the semblance
of free choice and by force you will always pick the very one
that we want you to pick. It's the way it works. And that's
not how God works. God decrees and there it is.
But beloved, if we think that the will of man, the volition
of man, that's why I read John 1, the first, the prologue of
John as we got started this morning, because the scripture says that
no man, the will of no man, the mind of no man has chosen to
be born of God. But the God and His will alone. Ephesians chapter 1 says the
very same thing. Chapter 2, by grace you have been saved through
faith which is not of your own doing. God has caused us to be
born again. Paul says that to the Ephesians
and Peter writes that to the Jews in the dispersion, his first
letter. We are not free creatures. We are clay molded in the hands
of our creator for his purposes. And his purposes are good. God's
intention in the creation was not to create a perfect world. God's intention in this creation
and the fall was that the fall would take place, that he would
put forth all things to bring a people to himself by his power. Now people like to say, well,
is that fair? It's beyond fair. It's perfect. It's perfect. Well, I don't like that God.
Then he hasn't revealed himself to you. I'm going to say that
again. He hasn't revealed Himself to
you if that God is offensive to you. And that's okay. It's
okay because in God's timing, if you belong to Him, He will
show you the truth through the hearing of His Word. But here
we have some things to think about. We have some things to
think about. In the beginning, we see that
in John. We see that here in Genesis.
John was writing with the right view of Genesis in mind. In the
beginning. That doesn't mean long ago in time, once upon a
time. That means before there was time.
Before there was time, there was God. Before there was anything,
God was. God, by definition, according
to the scripture, has always been. That means he never wasn't.
And he doesn't have a beginning, so he's eternal. But everything
that exists in the world, as we'll see today, I mean, John
summarized this, didn't he? All that was made, he made all
things. And nothing that was made exists without him. He's done it all. Paul says in
Colossians 1, he upholds all of it by the word of his power.
Beloved, that is an incredible promise to us, the elect. So
I want you to see just how beautiful this is gonna unpack. I could
barely sleep last night because I love this text so much. Because
it just relates so much to the gospel. But in the beginning,
God, God is the one who is here. God is the one who is doing something.
In our English translations, they do miss some stuff. They
do miss some stuff. They miss the beauty of the Hebrew
expressions. They miss the chi-isms. They
miss the poetic way in which these people wrote. Now, when
did God reveal this to Moses? When he was a little boy. When
he was being raised in the Pharaoh's palace. And his mom would teach him the
things that her mother and father taught her, and grandparents
taught them, and great-grandparents taught them, and it was oral
tradition. Now, I have had the opportunity
and the privilege of knowing many of my greats, my great-grandparents,
great-aunts and uncles. Some of them lived to be near
a hundred and one uncle that I had was a great uncle. He was
born, goodness, 1901. And I was able to know him and
to sit with him and to talk with him. And to hear these people
tell of these tales and tell of these stories and corroborated
by the others of generations, we have lost the skill of hearing. We've lost the skill of communicating. We've lost the skill of taking
arguments together and putting them down and putting them into
words and telling a story and letting that story be validated
by continued historical preservation. And I think it's because we are
more selfish today and more self-focused today than we've ever been. And
I'll be honest with you, and it's not because I'm a boomer
because I'm not. That's not my generation. But social media
is destroying the brains and the intelligence of our world.
It's garbage. The quickness of it. You know,
when we first learned to text and have that T9 text, we used
to text in paragraphs, because that's what our generation did.
We wrote language. And I remember LOL and BRB and
all these. And now there's so many abbreviations
that I feel like somebody is speaking some foreign language
when I get text sometimes. I'm like, what the world? Is
this a code to the launch pad for the Department of Defense?
What is this? And I have to go find my children.
Dad, I'm going to be late for work, but please pick up my shoes.
I don't say that. What is that? This is nine letters and two
periods and a squirrely. That squirrely means I'm tired. I'm sorry. I can imagine if I'm
in the nursing home one day how my children are going to communicate
with me. The Hallmark cards are going to be like Post-its. Ridiculous. Point being, the
people of antiquity remembered stuff. They told people things. And then at the time appointed
by God himself, he caused Moses to write these things down. And
to take scribes and other people and those that he mentored and
those that God was preparing to continue to lead his people
and their understanding and knowledge of his promises. He wrote it
down. And it wasn't new to them. They
didn't hear these things that Moses wrote one day and went,
Oh my, I've never thought. They're like, finally, I've got
this written down. I don't have to remember it. Don't lose the
paper. There was nothing. There was
no time, but when there was nothing, there was only God, and God is
self-sufficient. And in this first line, it says,
in the beginning, God, He is the only one there, He started
something, He created something, and this is a one-liner that
tells everything. Here's what it says. In the beginning,
God created the heavens and the earth. God created the dirt,
the land, the ground, and the atmosphere. This is what they're
saying here. He created it. And the very next
thing that is said is the earth, the land, look at this, was without
form and was void and darkness was over the face of the abyss,
the deep. the emptiness, the nothingness.
The word there, nothingness, is a better translation. And
God, in the essence of God, was there over the face of this nothingness. The Bible is not telling us in
chapter 1, verses 1 and 2, that there was water there. Water
is symbolic of an abyss. Water is symbolic of life, even,
in the New Testament. But in this context, this land,
the sky, the atmosphere, there's nothing. There's nothing. That's what the scripture is
teaching us. There's nothing. It's amazing how many doctrinal
positions have been created based on English translations over
the last 500 years. My 16-year-old daughter is named
Ruby. Last night, she said, Dad, I have looked at my Bible, and
I've looked in your Bible, and I cannot find my name in the Bible. Proverbs
31.10. I said, oh, baby, we got to pull
out the older versions. It's in all of them. She was
so relieved, she took a picture of it, probably put it on Snapchat,
Facebook, whatever else she does. Squigglies, exclamation point,
and some hashtag or something. Booyah, I don't know. What will archaeologists think
in a thousand years? They won't think at all, because
there'll be no written record of anything. But there's many things that
people try to say there. See, there was already something
there. No, this language is showing there was nothing. There was
nothing. God created. God has made. God
has made the sky. God has made the land. God has
made something in place of the fact He was hovering in His essence. He was with nothing else. That's
what the abyss is supposed to show us. That's why it says the
deep. The abyss. And water is symbolic
in this sense as lifeless and nothingness and darkness and
chaotic. I mean, think about it. Am I
stretching this? I mean, have you ever been? I mean, some of
you might have been in the Navy. I got friends that were on submarines
for a year, and I'm like, what in the world? I thought it was
great. I thought it was awesome. I don't
want to stand on a dock in the windstorm. I don't want the rain
coming sideways. I don't want to look at the ocean. I don't like it. It's frightening. I don't want to go to outer space.
We've got a free ride. See ya. I'm not going. You better
take off without me. It's chaotic. It's vast. It's horrifying. I don't want
anything to do with it. So the symbolism of this in verses
1 and 2, we need to get it. We need to understand that this
is what is being said. That out of nothing, There was
only God with nothing but Himself and He created all things that
became out of nothing. The earth, the land had no form. It was devoid of any substance.
It did not exist. It was formless. It was dark.
It was without any real purpose because it did not exist. Chaos,
non-existent, purposelessness, darkness. Darkness was over the
face of the nothingness, but the Spirit of God was there.
That's the picture Moses wants us to see. Why? Because otherwise we fabricate some idea of what might
have been there with God eternally. Otherwise we're going to try
to go and become creation scientists. Otherwise, we're going to try
to become, you know, Christian scientists. Nothing wrong with
being a Christian and being a scientist. But it's not the way it is, you
know. For those of you who've ever done research, terminal
projects, maybe master's degrees, if you're using empirical data,
if you've got a thesis, you can squeeze it. You can find the
data. You can ignore some stuff if
you want to. I've got 400 citations. I've got 160, 170 references
already, sources. I'll just leave this one aside. We can practice and plan and
do what we want to do. We can make it work. Beloved,
we don't have to make God work. He's working. We don't have to
reveal God through any other means. He's already done it.
He's shown himself to be the one who was there before there
was anything, and then he created everything, and he caused and
started the beginning. That's what Genesis 1 and 2 is
supposed to help us see. And John makes it known, in the
beginning was God, and God was with. Does it say what? It doesn't say anything. It doesn't
say God was with a whole bunch of chaotic cosmological stuff. It says God was with God. The Word was with God. The Word
was God. He was in the beginning. That's
all there was and then all of a sudden things are there. This
reveals what is before creation and it's only God. Only God is
before creation. Everything else was nothing.
There was nothing. There was nothing. Romans 1,
the creation clearly shows. Colossians 1, he upholds the
word. We're gonna go to these things. Hebrews 1, we see all
this stuff, but the point that needs to be pressed is if we
don't get this right, we're gonna mess up these six days and we're
gonna misunderstand the very point of this being written down
so that we understand what day seven is. He created all these things in
two parts. Day one through three, day four,
five, six, so that he can show you day seven. Birds exist so
that Christ is our Sabbath. The atmosphere, rain, is because
Christ is our Redeemer. This is election's purpose. Remember
what I said? The whole narrative of the Bible
is about election? About God? doing what he decreed to do and
by power putting it into play. I don't even like to say that.
Bringing it to fruition. Before any time was or anything
was God. In Hebrews chapter 11 it says,
by faith we believe that God created the world. What does this reveal? It reveals
that God created all things and before God created all things
there was nothing but lifelessness and nothingness. God is and all
other things come from Him. He is the cause of all things.
He created all things in order to be seen for one purpose, His
glorious grace. Realize nobody worships Him because
they enjoy the Grand Canyon. And if they do, it's wrong worship,
right? They don't give thanks to God
for creating the Grand Canyon. Only those who are elect, who
see His glory in redemption, praise Him for Christ. And in
comparison, the Grand Canyon's like, who put this mud hole here?
Ugh, can't wait for God to fill this in. This is in the way. God is seen as the one who creates
all life. God is seen as the one who alone can make order
out of nothing. God is the one who overcomes
the darkness. I want you to think about this.
God is the one who orchestrates all things under the counsel
of his own will. You see the apostles teaching. Everything
that I've just said comes from a New Testament letter. God is
seen as the one who alone determined that which reveals him. God is
seen as the one who manifests his wisdom in his order of creation. God is seen as the one who calls
us all who see him to see him. God is seen as the one who sovereignly
masters his own purposes for his own glory. And I want us
to see this in two senses. I want us to see this in these
next six days, maybe not two, but just a couple of things to
think about. That God is revealing that He alone can create all
things out of nothing. And that God alone reveals what
He has done for His purposes that are good. That are good. So in this, we see this land
that is nonexistent. We see this sky that is nonexistent. We see this water which is representative
of nothingness. No form, no life, no purpose,
chaotic, devoid. So the sky and the land with
the waters are pictures of nothing that all of a sudden, because
God created all these things, they became something. And God will not just not create.
He will create with purpose. He will create with order. And
in that order, He will reveal Himself. And ultimately in that
revelation he will show himself to be Savior and Redeemer of
his people. So God expresses his self-revelation in creation
to show his election of his people in redemption. I'm going to show
you that. What's the very next line? In our translation it says in
verse 2b, And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of
the deep. Let's translate it this way.
In the very presence of God was in the presence of nothing. The very essence of God was there
with nothing. In the emptiness of all nothingness,
God was. So get this, beloved. Everything
was there already. Because God is everything. All
I have is Christ. We sang it this morning. This
is it. This is how Paul can say, I counted all of loss. This is
how we can look at trials and go, Just a hangnail. Ah, that really
smart. Let me clip it off. Everything that matters in all
preeminence was already there. God himself was there and he
created the world that he might create us to see his glory for
who he really is in the person of Jesus Christ. That is why
we exist. That is why the world is now.
There are a plethora of philosophical ideologies around this notion,
but they are abusing and not listening to the apostles. And
they have created their own Old Testament theological systems
that are not exegetical. They're not exegetical. And they
are the dominant themists of our day. The Spirit of God, the presence
of God was present over nothing. This breath, the spirit, the
presence, the essence. This is the presence of God.
He, Elohim, the High One, is present in the nothing. He is
the only thing that is present. And God is doing something here
in Genesis. He's doing something. He's making
something. God is redeeming something by
creating. What is He redeeming? Nothing. The nothingness. He's creating
everything out of it. And He is visible in this by
revealing His redemption as a sovereign creation of His own power and
desire. This is what God is doing. So
God presents himself as the creator out of nothing. He is there,
nothing else is there. God is with himself. John 1,
we've already said that a thousand times. God is doing this for
himself and God is creating in order to reveal himself in the
light of what he is showing, his creation. And there's tons
of things that I'll talk about as we move through this text
in the months to come. But the rest of the Bible follows
this pattern. The rest of the Bible follows this idea, especially
the totality of the book of Genesis. We see what God is doing. We
see that he's creating order, that he's creating life, that
he's creating beauty, and he's creating purpose out of nothing,
out of death, out of chaos, out of waste, out of darkness. Because what do we think about
when we think about the book of Genesis? We think about the people of Genesis,
chapters 1 through 12. They're like, oh, the world just
went to heck in a handbasket, didn't it? What's wrong with
these people? They're people. That's what we do. That's what
human beings do when given any opportunity to do anything. We take glory for ourselves. We need to learn to think simply
by faith. As we see the scripture unfold
and we watch God make life and reveal himself. In verse three,
let's look at three through five. And God said, let there be light.
I don't know if you know if I'll get through with all this today.
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. That ought to bring it to you folks. And God called
the light day, and the darkness He called night, and there was
evening and morning the first day. God said, you're going to
see that over and over again, God said, what is this? This
is God decreeing something. God stating that this shall be.
And everything that God decrees comes to pass. So that which
God desires, He decrees, and it is done. Now, think about that for a second.
Well, God desires X, Y, Z, but he's only going to do A, B, C.
Baloney. That's garbage. That's theoretical
theology. That's philosophical idealism.
That's humanism. That's Satanism. I'm just going
to call it what it is. Luciferianism, if we want to
be academic. Don't call it Satan. Luciferianism then. who as a
created being stood before the counsel of God in the presence
of all that which is holy, righteous, good, and perfect. And in his
heart, he thought, I'm looking pretty good. Why am I not standing
on the stage? And God threw him out of heaven.
And he was created for that purpose. So it's always been that the
creation wants to share in the glory of its creator. I mean,
we do that, don't we? I mean, you ever heard a famous
person throw names? You ever heard somebody, you
know, I mean, if my daddy was the king, don't you think I'd
tell you? My daddy's the king. I mean, my daddy was the sheriff,
and I like to tell folks about it. I made a lot of enemies that
way. That's what we do. We don't want
to keep to ourselves. We don't want to be humble. We
don't want to be quiet. We want to share. And we're nothing
in and of ourselves, but by goodness, if we're connected in any way,
you know so-and-so tweeted at me. Even if it's bad. If a popular person tweets at
somebody, they're going to share it. They're going to screenshot
it. I mean, could you imagine making
much of being a created thing? to the point where we say we
deserve to stand up there and get glory that belongs to God.
But it's what we do, beloved, it's what the world does. And
God is decreeing all that He has eternally purposed, and it
did come to pass in creation, and it shall come, and it did
come to pass in redemption, and it shall come to pass in glorification. We will be glorified with Christ. The irony behind that is the
very thing that Lucifer wanted, we get. We get to share in the glory
of our Savior. We get to stand with Him. We get to sit next
to Him, with Him, as He is on the right hand of majesty. You
talk about a rub. You talk about a rub. That's
bad. That's chafing in the 10th degree.
It's rough. And then God said, He decreed
something. He said, let there be light.
And then there was light. And the light was good. And God
explains. So in these six days, God decrees,
then God does, and then God the Spirit through Moses explains
a little bit of how those details look. It's not different things. God's saying this, and then this
happens, and then he goes... This is not Phantasma, Phantasia. What is that Mickey Mouse thing,
you know, where he's creating things with the old... Gosh,
I just dated myself, didn't I? I don't even know. I think that
thing was on long before I was even born, but I don't know.
God's not a wizard out there with a magic wand, wooing the
world and the cosmos into being. He said it, there it was. It
came into being. How did it happen? But he gives the expression of
when he said, let there be light, we noticed that on the fourth
day, he also created some lights. Lights to govern the day and
the night, own creation. So this light is a lot different.
In John's gospel, we see that the life was the light of men
that was in Christ. In him was life, and this life
was the light of men. We also see John say that Darkness
shall not overcome the light of the word who is God who created
all things. So here we're having to understand
that the apostles define Genesis. That the apostles tell us by
God the Spirit that Genesis chapter 1 is supposed to be showing God's
sovereign election and revelation of himself. in creation. So this
light is God's glory being shown. Something now can behold Him. Other than the celestial beings,
which don't exist in this realm. Touche. He did cast him down,
but you can see what I'm saying. Let there be light. He's showing
himself by decree, and then now by power, and there was light. God then, in the midst of nothing,
shined. Is that Corinthians 4, 6 come
to mind? I should tattoo that one on the
wall somewhere. God, who said, let light shine out of darkness,
has shone in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge
of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. God is in the
business of showing Himself as He sees fit. Creation sees Him. Creation reveals Him. Creation
is for the sake of redeeming His people for Him. And God is
glorified and the light was good. He saw it. He made it. God in
power revealed Himself. And in this now, we see the further
explanation that God separated the light from the darkness.
Colossians 1? Anyone? You have been what? Transferred
out of the domain of darkness into the light of the kingdom
of His Son. You've been snatched out of darkness. Your blind eyes
have been made to see. You don't think the Jews put
this together when the blind man came up seeing? And they accuse him of performing
magic tricks on the Sabbath? How dare you do the work of God
on the Sabbath of creation, creating eyes? I bet the man wasn't even
blind. This is a whole scam. It's a
conspiracy theory. His family set this up from the
beginning some 39 years ago. That's a long stick, isn't it? And guess what he got thrown
out of the temple? God separated from the light
from the darkness. The darkness shall not overcome the light.
We shall not remain in the darkness. God is decreeing and bringing
to pass His sovereign and free grace for His people. The darkness
being death, God creates life. God creates light out of darkness.
Nothing. He creates all things. This picture
is the purest and simplest point of Genesis 1. Let's not miss
it. God in the creation of the sky
and the land is showing himself as the sovereign creator of the
world and in doing so he is proving himself and showing himself that
he is doing all things to be the sovereign savior of his people.
Many people can intellectually see the power of God and what
he makes, but only those who God gives true eyes can see his
glory in redemption. Now God has made a day. Day one. Time has come. Time has been
created. Time will bring his glory through
the person of Jesus Christ into the world for his elect. And
we will see this promise in this picture continually throughout
the rest of this letter. Day one. God makes glory revealed
from nothing. Verse six. We see these words. And God said, let there be an
expanse in the midst of the waters. And let the waters separate 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, skies. And there was evening and there
was morning the second day. Now think about that for a second.
God's not just going, boom, here's a bunch of stuff to see. Look
what I made. In Roanoke, Virginia in 2005,
six, yeah, five, I was standing outside a kiosk of a good friend
of mine named Mark, who's a professional magician, semi-retired at the
time. And as a magician, your pockets
are typically always full when you're active. You got stuff
everywhere. Some of my friends carry birds.
all sorts of things with them. That's just what we do, okay? And a woman walked up and she
was looking for silks. And we sold silks at the magic
shop, of course. And she's saying, oh, let me
see those silks. And she's looking at the silks and all. She's very
eccentric. She's talking about how she was in Tibet one time,
and she met some kind of magic man there. I'm just doing some
coin manipulation just in my hand. So I'm moving a coin, and
I vanish the coin. And then I do like this, and
a sponge ball appears. And I'm just doing it. And she's
watching. She goes, oh, you have the power of creation. I'm like,
no, you think that's bad? Watch this. And I vanish the
coin. And then, you know, we're magicians. We follow each other.
It appeared in his hand. Next thing you know, it changes
to a flower and then a silk. Oh, you've got the power of creation.
You're able to create anything out of nothing. I said, woman,
with all due respect, if I could create anything, do you think
it would be antiquated half dollars and Spongeballs? Or would it
be wealth and medicine and health? I showed her how to do it just
to disillusion her. That's what people look at. They
think God just created something. Poof! Look at me! Look what I
did! Ta-da! I got to sit stage. I got to
sit at the stage. Robin and I did. She didn't enjoy
it as much as I did. But I got to sit at the stage at a magic
show in Vegas, David Copperfield. There's two other shows I want
to see. One of them is obsolete now because the Tigers sort of
took it off. But I'm glad I got to see it. And I took notes.
And you could say that it was really upsetting, David. I just,
I didn't want to forget these things. It's just amazing talent.
It's good stuff. And when you're that close and
you can't figure it out, when you know the trade secrets, but
you can't figure it out, it's like, wow, this is great. And
so I was just amazed. Sitting there, and there's nothing,
boom, it's an edsel. Poof, there's a bird. Poof, there's
a llama. I mean, this is great. This is
good stuff. That's the way people look at
God sometimes. God created things. Poof, there's a world. Look at
all the birds. Look at the fish. Look at the
sea. Poof. This is not the point. God's
not just putting something out there with no purpose. He's not
putting things out there with no order. God created the world
in a way that has purpose and that purpose is to bring His
people to Himself. That purpose is to show that
He's the giver of life and that only He can create the environment
where life can be and where life can multiply to be blessed. That only God can create things
in such a way out of nothing. to not only perfect an intricate
system of life in the sky, in the atmosphere, in the soil,
in the seas, in the lakes, in the ponds, in the rivers, on
the backs of leaves and a droplet of rain, but that that order is nothing
compared to the whole point of it all is that the order of all
creation is to give hope. in the redemption of His people. So God separates the darkness
of the waters. He separates them. He separates
the atmosphere, the water that's all up in the sky that brings
rain, and He separates it from the water that's down below.
Amazing. This water that is covering all
things. It is about to be, it is preparing
to be used for living things. It is preparing to bring forth
land. And Jesus, as we know, is the
living water that comes from above. And God has decreed and
done the work. Day two, God decreed to split
the water and God did it in verse nine, nine through 13. 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. And
God called the dry land earth, and the waters that were gathered
together he called seas. And God saw that it was good.
And then God said, let earth sprout vegetation, plants yielding
seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit, and which is their seed,
each according to its kind on the earth. And it was so. And
then God brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according
to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit, and 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. God
said, And then God did. God decreed and then God delivered.
God purposed. Now we see that God will order
a place. He will order a place. He will create a place, a place
where things can live, an environment where things can live, an environment
where things can be blessed, can be approved by him and multiply
and grow. and become more and become more.
So God creates the lands and the seas in the manner in which
he pulls his people out of darkness. He separates them and out of
the chaotic symbolism of the deep, of the abyss of nothingness,
he creates the seas and out of the seas he brings forth land
so that we can live. The rock of our salvation, the
foundation God is light. He overcomes the darkness. God
makes land. He overcomes the abyss. God creates
life, living vegetation on the land. And only He can do that. The land and its substance reveals
God's provision for life and most importantly for eternal
life. Out of death, out of nothing, the darkness cannot overcome
it. So day three, God decreed and
God created, God made a place on which to stand, a refuge,
if you will, a home for his people. We're not mermaids. He created
humans. And he will continue to do this
throughout the history of man. Verse 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 a sign 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 and to rule
over the day and to rule 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 before the day. God
has now said again, and the scripture says here that he's created the
celestial bodies, the lifeless planets and stars. What do they
do, according to the psalmist? They display the handiwork of
his hands. They display his glory. They teach of his creative power
and his glorious providence. He creates them all. They declare his glory. God sets
forth the cosmic order through which all life will be sustained.
Just think about it for a second. It's a delicate balance. There's
nothing, you know, the moon just can't blow up and expect not
to destroy things. It's necessary. God created it
and purposed it necessary for the sustenance of life. God did it. By His hand, by His
command, He upholds the universe by the word of His power. So
now when you hear Paul say that in Colossians, you need to think
about it a little bit differently. It's not just that Jesus Christ
is the creator of all things that upholds it by the word of
His power because He's sovereign, which is true, but He does so
as a promise. As God in creation sustains life,
so God as Savior will sustain us eternally through Christ.
for Him and by Him and through Him, all things. And God made these two great
lights, and then we're going to have to pick up next week. God made
these two great lights. The revelation of His glory even in creation
that reflect Him. And that one, as we know, is
a reflection of the other, the one that comes by day, the star,
which provides its own source of light. This is the creation
of what gives light to the earth. It causes things to live. But
even at night, there is a reflection of that glory as the world turns
and shadows. The very light is shined in the
darkness. The darkness will not overcome it. We can see in the creation of
the cosmos and the celestial beings that God's creative power
is in the midst of all circumstances, is in the midst of great darkness.
Even when we see the darkness turn and we see the seas rage,
we have the light of the gospel in the midst of it all. You see
this. And then he shows us hell on earth with people disobeying
and causing ruin. But he never, ever fails them.
He never fails his people. God will make two peoples. He
does make two persons, but he makes two different types of
people. He creates those for honorable use and those for dishonorable
use. If you want to borrow Paul's verbiage in Romans 9, and in
the context of that theologically, God has created all people to
divide them into two parts. One to be darkness and others
to be light. And he's done so by his sovereignty,
after the counsel of his own will. And He will be present among
both. The chaff will be in the church. The reprobate will be
in the church. They will gather. But the elect He will save. The
elect will ultimately shine, as the moon does, as a reflection
of His glory. And He will shine before all
of them, but only one will see. Only the elect will see. Only
the elect will know Him. Only the elect will live. And
so in day four, God creates the celestial bodies to reveal His
sovereignty, to reveal His sovereign grace and His promise of life. And beloved, we could, every
day is like this. And we'll pick up from here next
week, but be encouraged. Read this. Read this text. Read
Genesis 1. Read John 1. Read Colossians
1. Read Hebrews 1. Go in and read
those texts this week as we continue and until we get through with
the first three chapters. I'm going to teach out of Genesis
until we get through with the first three chapters, then we're going to go to 1 Timothy
and then we'll be flipping back in two. But beloved, be encouraged. I hope this is not the first
way you've ever looked at Genesis this way because I'm sad for
you, but now that you've heard it, I want you to read through
the lens of Christ. I want you to read there and to see the
sovereignty of God for us. This is how we worship in truth
by the Spirit. to know and to understand. Now,
I'm sure there's a lot of questions, and tonight, Theology on Call
probably have a lot of questions concerning this, but, well, what
about this, or what about, okay, those things are interesting
to discuss, but that's not what the Bible is trying to reveal
to us. The Bible is revealing God in his sovereignty to create
a people for himself. So be blessed. Let's pray. We thank you, Father, for the
truth of your word. We thank you, Lord, for your servant Moses,
who was a servant. He was not a son over the affairs
of your house as you teach us through Paul, but Lord, he's
just like the rest of us. He was a vessel of mercy chosen
before the foundation of the world to live in the world, to
declare your great gospel, the good news of your salvation,
perfected for all time in Jesus Christ. And so Lord, as we look
at this world around us, and all the things that cause us
to go, wow, Lord, let us continue therein, but Father, most importantly,
let us just be in all of your grace. As it points to the promise
and to the power of salvation, that there is nothing that takes
place, nothing, absolutely nothing that is outside your purpose.
We have ordered it all. You have even ordered the chaos. And so, Father, in all of that,
we can worship you. And we pray these things in Christ's name.
Amen.