So It Began

Where are y'all from? Illinois. In Canada. A town called Ottawa. Farm country? 90 miles from Chicago. Ottawa, Illinois. I was stationed there. No, I'm Canadian. And my mom is visiting from Canada. So you're kind of a mixed bag. I was stationed there. She knew that whole place. In Rantoul. Rantoul. I see your champagne. Yeah. Down there about, that was 1966. That's a long time ago. Yeah, Rantoul. Your cousin.

Tina, as they found blockages around the park, she's going to have to have a stance properly put in this one. So we're going to encourage her to speak a little. Continue to remember Judy Willoughby. I talked to her yesterday. She said that the Therapy is going okay, it's kind of hard. But she was able to get to the hospital and continue her stay over there in therapy, and she won't have to leave that.

Happy birthday to Wanda Vance. And remember the others who requested credit, Brown family and Rosalinda this week. Skippers need family. Skippers need, yes, family. He's never passed away. Okay. You're going next week for your surgery? Yeah, Thursday. Thursday. He died. When did he die? He died yesterday morning.

Well, let's begin our worship service in the morning with hymn number 40. Shhh. Number 40. Raise thy faithfulness. Raise thy faithfulness, O God my Father. I love you. I'm Praise Thy faithfulness for unto You! Summer and winter and springtime and harvest, sun, moon and star, Born with all nature in mind and hope in mind. ♪ Mercy and love ♪ Great is thy faithfulness ♪ Great is thy faithfulness ♪ Morning by morning new mercies I see ♪ All I have needed I can have provided Praise thy faithfulness, Lord unto thee! Hardened for sin, the peace that endures! I only give presents to cheer and to gawk. Three for today, a bright hope for tomorrow. This seems so fine with 10,000 each side. Praise thy faithfulness! Praise thy faithfulness!

Morning by morning new mercies I see All I have need thy hand hath provided After Scripture reading and prayer, we'll sing hymn number 287. The hymn of the Bible is thoroughly read through the first book of the Bible, Genesis. I'm going to read the first verse. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.

Let's pray. Our Father in heaven, we praise you and thank you. We have your word. You're a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path. the mercies of your day. We thank you for grace sufficient for all our needs, sufficient to save our wretched soul. We thank you, Father, for all you've done for your children and do for them. You're worthy of praise and honor. You're God. There is none beside you, none like unto you. You declare the end from the beginning. come to pass. We bow to your great sovereignty, knowing full well that this universe is in your hands to do with as you please.

Father, we pray for those who are sick, who are going through trials, who have been added to the prayer list. We ask Lord your help and mercy for them. Turn their eyes to Jesus Christ, give them faith to trust him. Help us this day to worship you. Cast us down into the dust where we belong. Lift our eyes to see him who sits at our right hand. Ever ready to make intercession for his people. Break our hearts and move our minds to think on him who's worthy of all praise and honor. We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ.

Hymn number 287, Like a River Glorious. Like a river glorious is God's perfect peace. Over all victorious Earth is getting closer, fuller every day. Earth is getting closer, deeper all the way. Straight up on Jehovah, hearts are fully blessed. Later in the hollow of His blessed hand Never folk can follow, never care or stand Not a surge of worry, not a shade of care ♪ Touched our spirit there ♪ ♪ Spirit of Jehovah ♪ ♪ Hearts are fully blest ♪ ♪ Binding as He promised ♪ ♪ Perfect peace and rest ♪ ♪ Every joy or triumph or thrall ♪ placed upon our Nile by the Son of Man. We may trust Him fully, all for us to do. May you trust Him wholly, find Him wholly true. Trail of Jehovah, who our son truly blest, Binding as we promised, birthed in peace and rest.

We're hoping to stay up with him. We've got some serious food over there. Let's pray. Father, again we approach in the name of Jesus Christ, our great Savior. And thank you, Father, as you have declared him to be worthy unspeakable gift. that you have given to your children, and with him you grieve freely, giving of all things. We know that everything this side of tradition, by mercy and grace, help us to reflect our love and care for the gospel of Jesus Christ, who is here in other places. That our giving express our understanding of what we've been given. We pray in Christ's name, amen. to you the the the you.

I'd like your attention back to Genesis chapter 1. This first verse of the Word of God is of paramount importance. There are no words, really, in the human language more profound and precise than the first few words here of Genesis. These words are not embraced, believed, and regarded. in the worship that is due the one of whom they speak, the entire remainder of the Bible will fall into the realm of myth and fable.

This is a short description of the beginning of all things. All things material, which are set forth from the beginning and the pre-existence, Sovereign, singular, self-sufficient, and worthy of all praise and worship. The God of heaven and earth. God is. And because He is, everything else is. One man called Him the great is necessary. And that's the truth. What follows these four words is the account of creation, That account is designed to cause men to fall down and worship the one who accomplished in six days the creation and making of all that is. How simple and sublime are these words.

Yet they cannot be understood, grasped, or embraced apart from the gift that God gives his people, and that is the gift of faith. We can't prove God created the world. We can't come up with empirical evidence, though men try to all the time. But when somebody says they found something in science that proves the Bible, that means they don't know the Bible. The Bible don't need proof.

And only those whom God has gifted with faith can understand the fact that these things are suffering. Our Lord says that in Hebrews chapter 11. says this, verse 3 says, through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God and they were not made of things that do appear. How do we understand that? Can you explain it?

Of course not. Don't try. Don't try to explain faith. It's invisible. You don't know if I have faith. I don't know if you have faith. You do. And I do. But you don't know if I have faith. Because it's invisible. By faith we understand. By faith God has given his people an understanding and an appreciation and a love for his word. And they believe it. They believe it. These words do not and cannot and will never fit into the realm of human logic. In a true sense, they're a trap for the kind of followed man that throughout the ages proved to be so. Yet they stand glorious and bright, a joy to the believer and a pain to the human intellect. In the beginning, God.

Men want to know how things got here, how they got here, what's their purpose is and so forth. Men won't answer us about the beginning. Astronomers look to the heavens and see some ancient distant explosion that resulted in the solar system that is conducive to life as we know it.

Hand in hand with the evolutionists, they look back to the earth and speak of a primordial ooze that spawned and spawned. The paramecium mutated into a swimming tadpole who in time sprouted legs and eventually walked upright. and now counts his tadpole self to be all and in all. The result is plain. The ooze worshiped his progenitor, Mother Earth. But in the beginning, when there was nothing but God, he spoke. in this day in which we live, a world that seems to be in an experience of political upheaval, in our nation especially.

And this name, God, is being bandied about with great enthusiasm. That name is being employed to give gravity and respectability to candidates. Men and women call themselves people of faith. I hear that a lot. But an elemental perusal of the manner in which The name as employed reveals that it's little more than a suggestion of a moral compass combined with a desire to garner the head nod of religious folk. Also interesting is that evolution of that name, God, comes from the English word good. They removed one O and called it God. His name is Jehovah or Yahweh. Men come up with all kinds of ideas of what to call him.

Disregarding the idiocy of such phrases as the man upstairs or other spewings of simpletons, there seems to be a willingness to change the name of God to make him more palatable to political correctness. Same folks who just a while back lobbied to teach creationism in school, along with evolution, who spoke of putting God back into the schools are now opting for a more readily acceptable terminology. They no longer speak of creation, a term that suggests the sublime, suggests the deity, but they speak of intelligent design. It sounds better, less offensive.

It's a phrase that, to their thinking, speaks of God without mentioning His name. That's clever, isn't it? Man has found a way to keep God in schools without ever mentioning His name. Here is a way to have faith without knowing who you believe. Some such word masonry serves only. The purpose is to allow the preacher an avenue by which he is not bound or accountable to worship the God revealed in this book.

He is not a higher power. He's God. He is not a supreme being. He's God. He is not an assistant in your paltry existence. He is God. He is not your better self. He is God. He is not that feeling in your heart that gives you self-esteem or makes you feel that you have found your niche in this universe. He is God.

Before there was anything, there was God. And all that you see, no matter where you look, finds its origin and its existence and its continuation in Him. God created the heaven and the earth. The earth is not our sedimentary mother. It is a created thing. According to the remainder of this first chapter, it is created for man to inhabit and it subserves him to man, a pasture for man to forage for provender. Man is the caretaker of it, not the other way around.

Now I'll grant you this, we have not done such a great job since Adam failed. But what else might you expect? from the curse. We have plucked its leaves like Adam did and hidden its foliage to cover our sin and hide from God. And we as a race are still abusing it in the same way. Adam did that to proclaim a righteousness to cover his sin.

Those leaves were his righteousness. We can preserve its leaves and its bushes, its flora and its fauna. We can count ourselves righteous while we really know nothing and are doing nothing more than still hiding from God. God created the heavens and earth as a fact. There is only received by faith. The fact of it leaves man without excuse according to Romans chapter 1. Man acknowledges that he's the creator to some degree, but he refused to declare him as he is.

And they see that by what is around them. You folks who are from Illinois, that's flat farm country. We ain't got much flat farm country up here. We won't look at our back for it, we look at the stovepipe and that's how we see our back for it. God did that. We who live in the mountains often feel that. And we sit and watch our Beautiful mountains changed me. It's four seasons. We love being here.

God did that. When you see a Bismarck crawling across a half hill, God did that. When you pet your little cat on the head, God did that. He did it all. His sovereignty. And his eternal being made this handiwork. David said he created it with his hands. And the word there in the original means by manipulating his fingers a little bit. Isaiah said he created the universe in the span of his hand. That's from the thumb to the forefinger. Or the little finger, that's the span. God created that. But herein lies the rub, the fact of it is not the meaning of it.

The Old Testament is a wonderful book. Volume upon volume, author upon author, they all agree on one thing. And John the Baptist came along, and then the Lord Jesus Christ and the apostles, they came along. And later the church was formed. They had the Old Testament to preach Christ from. They didn't have the New Testament. So what Genesis 1 is about, it's about the Lord Jesus Christ.

He said to those scholars who studied the scriptures in John chapter 5 and verse 39. He said, you do search the scriptures for in them you think you find eternal life. But they are they which testify of me. It won't come to me that you might have life. They testified to me. This book is His book and it's about Him.

This book is not about facts, it's about meaning. And the Old Testament says someone is coming. The New Testament says someone has arrived in the epistles. The Gospel says someone has arrived in the epistles, says someone's coming again. That's what this book is about. This book is a record of redemption and the story before us in this chapter is about Christ and who dwelt with the fullness of the Godhead bodily and his wondrous work.

What he did when he came to this earth. what he did before the earth was. For we know from John chapter 1, he was the Word, the Word was with God, the Word was God, the same way it was in the beginning with God. And nothing was made that he did not make. When Adam was formed of the dust of the earth, God whose spirit has no hands, his spirit took hands to do that. Who created Adam? God, the Lord Jesus Christ did. It was he who knelt down in the dust, and formed man of the dust, and blew the breath of life in his nostril. It was the Lord Jesus Christ.

In the beginning are words that are employed to describe the beginner of all things, and that with a particular purpose. He did this for his good pleasure, as he does all things for his pleasure. He declared the end for He set the final chapter of this book. When did he say time would end? When did he say how everything would turn out? When did he declare that? In the beginning. So before he did anything here, he already had it mapped out.

Believers should never, never be too troubled in this world and too worried. We know how the story ends. We know how it ends. And it's a good ending. for the church of the living God, for the people of God, it's a good ending. They arrive back after being called out into the air and ride back on the white horses of the Lord Jesus Christ to end this thing and start it all anew. We know how the book ends.

Men do not like to think of purpose or absolutes or sovereign alignment of everything and everyone to an appointed end. Now let me be very clear. There is no unemployment in God's economy. Everybody has a job. And everybody's going to do their job. They are. They're going to do their job.

And everybody will glorify Him. You'll glorify Him in His mercy and His grace, or you'll glorify Him in His wrath and justice, but you will glorify God. When those men were gathered together around the cross, crying, crucify and crucify Him, it was the Lord who put those words in their mouth.

They were acting on their own. They said, this is what we want. We want to be rid of this man. The scripture says that something wondrous happened there. Against thy holy child Jesus, both Pontius Pilate and Herod and the Jews and the Gentiles were gathered together, were gathered, herded like sheep and goats, herded gathered together to do what whatsoever the Lord had before ordained to be done. They were acting with full wrath and anger against Christ. That was all according to plan.

That was how He was going to that cross because He didn't come to the earth to set up some earthly kingdom. He didn't come to earth as some kind of hallmark love letter from God. He came to earth to die in the room instead of His people and fully and completely satisfy God for their sins. So much so that God says, I will never remember their sins anymore. A perfect sacrifice. That's why Jesus Christ came to this world. A perfect sacrifice. Men do not like to think of the purpose of God. God does everything on purpose.

They prefer to think of the words in the beginning as a sense of a starting block. They assert that God began this thing as if he wound up a clock and it will tick and tick until the mainspring is fully relaxed and all things will then end. They assert that he has no personal interests or input in the outcome, but rather is a watcher as events unfold with each tick.

This idea has had not a small part in timepieces being called watches. That's why timepieces were called watches, because the makers of the first watches were called gods. Because men knew all they knew about time was when the sun went up and the sun went down. And then somebody would come up with minutes and seconds and put it on a dial and say, this guy's running out of time.

He's like, God, he's watching. And that's how the name Watchers came to be. But God's not a watcher. God's not a reactor. God is the actor in all things. He does according to his will. In heaven. In the armies of heaven. And among the inhabitants of the earth. And none can stay his hand or say or even ask him, what are you doing? None of your business what God does. His thoughts are not our thoughts. We couldn't understand it anyway.

The beginning is not about the ticking of time. It's about a creator of time. And the time created is a time of regeneration. Our Lord said when he was described in Isaiah 63 as we looked through last week. Vengeance is in my heart, but the day of my redeeming has come. Vengeance is out there. Our Lord is going to avenge His elect. Our Lord is going to destroy all who oppose Him in the end of time. Now is not that time. We live in a time of mercy, a gospel age. what is called by our Lord in Isaiah 61 and in Luke 4 when he preached in the acceptable year, the year of the Lord, a year there isn't a time period. The heavens and the earth would merely serve as cogs and cans that reflect the machine of redemption. That's what all that is. The heavens and the earth are about redemption, about the redemption.

If you're talking about redemption, you're talking about slavery. You're talking about being ruined. Or redeemed means to buy out of a slave market. Three words in the Hebrew language, in the Greek language. Greek language. Agorazo, ek agorazo, and luathro. These three words are the words used to describe redemption.

Agorazo means marketplace or slave market. We get our word agoraphobia from it. Agorazo. Then you have a prefix. and take out of the marketplace. Then you have the word luatro, which means to go to the marketplace, take out of the marketplace, and never allow to be put on the marketplace again.

That's redemption. God gave to the slave market. Is there a slave market? Yes. He who committed sin is a servant, a slave to sin. Paul said in Romans 1, sin hath reigned over us unto death. Rain ruled our existence. I know we like to think about we got a free will and all that. You don't have a free will. Nobody does. You act according to what your desire is. You act according to your character. You act according to your nature. Your will simply follows along like a little puppy that it is. It's not free. It's subject to you. It's not free. It's not.

God only does what he wants to do. That means his will is governed by what he wants. The men kind of think about the will of man that somehow has power to perform. That's where they make the mistake. That's where God's will is different. When God wills something, he has the power to perform it. You will something, you hope it'll work out. You get in your car and hope it'll work out.

I get in my car and it don't crank. I got on a Walmart the other day. It wouldn't crank. I willed it to crank. I wanted it to crank. It didn't crank. Why? Because my will ain't nothing. But it did reveal what I wanted. But that's all it did. That's all it did.

What if in the beginning God chose some of the fallen race to be trophies of His heretofore unrevealed grace, of love and mercy? Could it be that in the beginning the salvation was purposed as well as the fall? Surely not. Can we charge God with such absolute sovereignty? Can nothing slip up on Him, blindside Him so that He must alter His plan to adapt to the sinful ruin of creation? What if this creation included the fall? and spoke of another creation that was not physical, but spiritual. For the Lord does talk about us being a new creature, where circumcision and uncircumcision availeth nothing.

What if before the fall, the recovery, the redemption was already purposed? It was. For in Revelation 13, 8 it says the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world. Wait a minute, that's prior to the conception of it. So before a man ever sinned, It was already the redemption purposed in God. And God did not slay His Son or pour out His wrath on His Son. Christ did not give His life if there was a possibility that men would not sin. God is sovereign. Absolutely and completely sovereign.

One day before the fall, the recovery and redemption was purposed. It was. And what would really involve some, that would really involve some sovereign muscle and omnipotent wit and supreme skill. But that's what it took. For whom he did forego, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the firstborn among men of red, and moreover, whom he did predestinate. He also called. In whom He called, He also justified. In whom He justified, He also glorified.

All in the past tense. Ephesians chapter 1. God has blessed us with all spiritual blessing in Christ according to His chosenness and Him for the foundation of the world. That we should be holy without blame before Him and love having predestinated us through the adoption of children by Jesus Christ and to the praise of the glory of what? His unmerited favor. To the praise of the glory of His grace where He made us accepted in the beloved.

Now, you read Ephesians 1, 1-14, and then read chapter 2, verses 1-10, you see who God chose, who God saved, who God redeemed. Not the best of humanity, the absolute worst of humanity. The vilest of humanity. Why? Because that exalts His grace. Because if He saved the best of humanity, people would say, I can understand that. They were good people. That'd be good people for God to save them. That'd be good. I can understand that.

But if you look at the vileness, the foulest, the uncleanest, the most putrefying picture of human flesh, it's God who came alongside of that mass of putrefaction and said, live! And they lived. And he gave them life and he dressed them in a bridal gown and put rings on their fingers. And he told the world, this putrefying mess, her renown. Her beauty is renowned. Her beauty? Is he talking about me? Can that be a description of this vile creature? Beautiful? He said, beauty is renowned because of me. Because of me. What sovereignty? What sovereignty? Who is a God?

Well, I can do our God with pardon and iniquity, and yet with a no-wise care of the guilty. The creation, it's spoken of in chapter one and two of this book. is not about the physical creation of this world. It's a record of it. But it's about the new creation. It's about the new creation. How might this great new spiritual creation take place? Look at verses 1 and 2 of our text in Genesis. In the beginning God created the heaven and earth and the earth was without form and void.

That's us. That's us. Darkness was upon the face of the deep. That's the fall of man. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. The Spirit moved upon the face of the deep. The face of the deep is nothing but darkness. But to the Sovereign Spirit, darkness and light are the same thing according to Psalm 139. He created darkness, He created light. He said, both are the same to me. They're not to me. You cut off the lights, I can't see. The darkness and light are God's tombs. He said, they're the same to me, Psalm 139, 12.

The Spirit moved upon the face of the waters. You hear the Spirit moves on the water. Water is synonymous with the Word of God. Water is also described in the Scripture as human nature. Human nature is unstable. Reuben is unstable as water, the Lord said. Always taking the shape of the container. Always seeking the lowest place. Always running the course of least resistance. That's humanity. The Spirit moved upon the people of God. The elect of God with the Word of God. The result of the beginning is the new beginning. Called in Scripture the new birth. The Spirit moved.

How does that work? Really well, I just can't explain it. I can't explain how the preaching of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, somehow God takes and plants in a man's heart and gives him life. That is still an utter mystery to me. I don't have anything to do with it. I can't be blamed for it. And I certainly don't want the credit for it.

Like old D.B. Caldwell said when he was walking in New York and some drunk come out with a wine bottle and a brown sack. He said, you mean me Caldwell? He said, yes I am. He said, you saved me many years ago. He said, it looks like some of my work. My Savior had to keep you. I can't keep myself. The Lord don't keep me, I'm in trouble. The spirit moves and takes that word of God. The result of the beginning is the beginning called the new birth. You must be born again. How does that happen?

Did you consult with your parents to be born the first time? Did y'all have a council? You didn't? You mean to tell me that your parents got together without your consent and actually birthed you into this world and you were shot down to a cruel and cold universe and you didn't have anything to do with it? You didn't even know it had happened until it happened.

That's what the birth is. That's why the Lord calls it a birth. So we can look at a natural birth and say, oh, that's how it happened. God and His Spirit, by His Word, somehow, made life happen, and birthed us in this universe. What did it do? Nothing. We were passive in that, just like you were passive in Uber. This is a miraculous thing itself, and it defies description. This is God's doing, and it's marvelous in our eyes. When a man is brought to faith, he can say no more than this. The Spirit moved. Somehow I'm over deep waters.

No aspect of the new birth, this new creation can be attributed to anyone but who? The Creator. If it's a creation, who did it? The Creator. That makes sense, doesn't it? Do you have something to do with your new creation? Was it a one, two, three plan? Was it walking down the front aisle of some church? Was that what it was? Somehow that was a new creation. A simple plan of salvation, is that what it was? What happened? God in His grace and by His mercy made it happen.

It's described this way, of His own will begat He us with the word of truth. With the word of truth. You believe after you heard the word of truth, it says in Ephesians chapter 1 verse 13. After you heard the word of truth. What was that? It's explained in that verse. You believe after you've heard the Word of Truth, the Gospel, the Good News of your power, that's a personal program, possessive, of your salvation. You mean it's mine already? Yeah, you just didn't know about it. That PURCHASE, that REDEMPTION was made 2,000 years ago.

And then God in His wisdom and according to His purpose raises up crazy people like me on our hind legs to tell you what happened. But this is what you're going to find out if you ever truly hear the gospel. God has redeemed you. God has saved you. God has given you life in Jesus Christ if you ever hear the gospel right.

Now if the gospel you hear says now this is what you have to do, that's not the gospel. If the gospel that you hear says this is your starting place and you've got to finish it, that's not the gospel. The good news is, for a dead sinner who has no hope and no help in this world, the only good news is, not get out of your grave and do something. The only good news is this.

LIVE! By the Word of God. The only good news is, Jesus Christ has paid your sin debt. Jesus Christ has made you free. Jesus Christ has called you out of your grave and given you life eternal. That's the good news. Anything else is bad news. Anything else? When the man is brought to faith, we can say no more than the Spirit moved upon the Word of God.

You were born not of corruptible seed, but incorruptible seed. Even the Word of God was never going to abide forever. And this is the Word of God which by the Gospel is preached unto you, saith the Scripture. What is this Word employed by the Spirit that brings the new creation? It's the Word of God, commanding to light, to shine out of darkness, a light to dispel darkness.

So God says in verse 3, Let there be light. And there was light. And that's how it happened. It's not the sun, the moon, the stars. That's Jesus Christ, the light of the world. The light of the world. Comes to the elect by command of revelation. This light is Jesus Christ and is the glory of the revelation of sovereign salvation by Jesus Christ. Let there be light. And there was light. There had to be light because God said let there be light. And God cuts the light on in your soul.

You'll know it. I won't have to give an invitation. That's why I don't give them. I won't have to pressure you. Worry you. Try to convince you of anything. God cuts on the light. I'll just get out of your way. Because you'll fly out of Jesus Christ for the rest of your life.

Creation is but the story of our salvation. That's what the creation is. Read Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 and find out all that God did in preparation for the sustenance of this thing he would make called man. A full man was made from the dust of the earth. Everything he needed for sustenance and survival in life, God had already put in place. Same way with you as a child of God.

It's the operation of triune Godhead for and upon His ruined people to bring them to the first day. of a new life of Jesus Christ. Salvation is of the Lord, because He's the Creator, and you're the new creation if you're His. Sometimes we talk about God being sovereign in creation, and progress, and salvation, and that's true, He is. But the fact is, creation is our salvation. God bless you.

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