Answers In Genesis - Sunday School - Week 14

, this morning we are beginning A new session. So we have finished up 1 quarter. We're moving into a new quarter, but let's go ahead and pray. Lord, we thank you so much for just the blessing of life and the blessing of spiritual life.

We thank you that you have given us everything that we need for life and godliness. Starting with your word, we thank you that we can study it together freely in this country. We thank you, Lord, for your Holy Spirit, that illumines your word. And we thank you, Lord, for just giving us the body of Christ that we can get together and hear the word taught.

That we can encourage each other, over your word and we just ask that you just be with us now and fill us with your spirit. Bless all of our children, Sunday school teachers, as they Also study your word and we just thank you in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. Let me, we're gonna do just a little bit of review.

Before we get into this morning's lesson, I wanna introduce this course, but also I wanna take a moment to remind you why we do what we're doing here with our adult equiping school. This is our stated purpose. The adult equiping schools to train our families how to know, live, and speak God's word for His glory. So we wanna, during our times together, we want to impart, good Bible teaching and theology.

we don't want it just to become knowledge, we want it to be lived out in our lives, and we want to encourage all of us to, to speak and to share what we're learning, with our friends and family. it's our growing conviction. There's a couple of things at Cornerstone that, that have just grown on us over the years. One is, is we're very committed to the preached word.

And to, the bulk of our preaching to be basically what we call expositional preaching that we are just moving verse by verse through various books of the Bible. That doesn't mean that we don't hit theological topics. We think it's also important to hit certain theological topics, but if you've been here for very long, you'll see that the, one of the main pieces of our diet is just to move through the text, and that's what we're doing in the book of Genesis right now. And we feel very strongly about that.

At the same time. we do not believe that one Sunday morning sermon, can accomplish the full diet of God's people. there are, there are things that just cannot be accomplished in a 50-minute message. Sometimes it goes 55, sometimes it goes 60.

But there's just things that cannot be accomplished in a, once a week Sunday morning, exposition of God's word. And as elders. And you can, if you ever talked to Pastor Milton about this, this is something that really hits close to his heart is that we're just noticing that in the church in general, That there's really a dearth of knowledge in the body of Christ. it used to be that churches.

like a traditional church, you would come to church for Sunday school and you would get instruction. Then you would attend a morning service and there would be instruction. And then you would fellowship during the afternoon with your church family and potluck or whatever. Then you'd come back for an evening service and there'd be instruction.

And then There would be family worship that went on during the week and then the whole church basically would get back together on Wednesday night and there would be instruction. So for the gathered body of Christ, the traditional church used to have at least 4 times of instruction from their pastors. And a And today in a lot of churches, the only time of instruction, the only time they're hearing from their pastors is one message on a Sunday morning and even that in a lot of churches today has been reduced to about 30 minutes.

And it's no wonder that when the church is being hit with the types of cultural issues that we see today, that the Bible has a lot to say about.

you have Christians who just don't know how to answer and don't know how to respond. In fact, we're seeing a lot of believers. It, it's somewhat shocking sometimes to see some of the names, some of the pastors even that you respect that are caving in on very straightforward teaching of scripture and caving into the culture. And we think that one of the reasons is, is the people of God, are just not equipped, that people aren't equipped to deal with a lot of the things that are.

Our culture is presenting to us. And so one of the, just one of the ways that we We are trying to address this issue is, is, is Sunday school. There's been talk about different ways to do it during the evening, whatever, but while we are not sabatarian, in the sense of believing or teaching that Sunday is the new Lord's Day and everybody must be, must rest from all labor on the Lord's Day, that's sabitarianism in a nutshell. We do believe in the traditional concept of the Lord's Day.

Not in a legalistic sense, but it's just a wise, in our opinion, it's a wise thing. To do what the church has been doing for a long time and just as, as best as you can, if you, unless you're providentially hindered to make Sundays about God and His people. And so we, I wanna just encourage you guys to consider that, and I'm preaching the choir here because you're here at 9 o'clock, but to, to spread this message that that Sunday is a day to be with God's people as much as you can and, and, and to make it, make a day of it, make a day of it.

and so what we're presenting, we're, we're presenting material in Sunday school that's not gonna get covered in the sermon, both on the adult level but also on the children children's level, and we've coordinated the instruction to where what we're learning in here, the kids are also learning in there and at different levels.

And, and we're hoping that that's going to assist parents as they're going home and they're doing having family devotions and, and they're able to talk through a lot of the exact same material that their, their kids are learning in Sunday school. I know it's been a blessing for me to come home after having taught this class and to be driving home and hear that Jaime has been teaching the exact same thing to my daughter, or that Matthew Kaufman has been teaching the exact same thing to my son and we're able to talk about.

These things on the way home from church and talk about it during the week. So the, the nutshell statement that we've, that we've been talking about as an elder board is that, there is a deposit of truth that the Lord has given to the church and the pastors of the church are responsible to cover that deposit of truth and hand it to God's people.

And while we believe very strongly in the preached, exposition of the word Sunday mornings during the sermon, we do not believe that the Sunday morning sermon can carry the full or shoulder the full load of the whole deposit of truth that we believe God's people need to get. And so that's why we feel very strongly about Sunday school. so I need to record this message and have it. Played during our, our service.

and so we want to encourage you guys to, to keep rolling. We, we, we're excited that you come and And we're And we're excited about what the Lord's doing. we're, I'm gonna give you more information on this a little bit later, but, starting in towards the, I think it's gonna be the beginning of February, we're gonna offer a short module that's gonna run concurrent with this class on parenting, for some of our, kids or young, I shouldn't say kids. I'm 47, so now I call them kids.

Young parents with younger kids, we're gonna offer a, a, a course and we'll be giving you guys more information on that and that's gonna run concurrent for about 4 to 5 weeks with this class and so we'll give you guys more information as we get closer to that. All right, does that make sense? That's, that's what we're trying to accomplish, in these courses. We've just finished.

We can trust the Bible. In the we can trust the Bible course, the big thing that we've been doing is studying bibliology trying to give us a philosophy of life. How do we read the Bible? How should we interpret the Bible and how should we view the Bible in its application in our lives.

that's basically what these 1st 13 weeks have been all about. is the Bible can be trusted and we can apply it to our lives. In this course, it's called God is Creator and Redeemer. And we're going to just start taking our philosophy of scripture and start marching through the Bible chronologically, historically, and, and apply our bibliology to the various texts of scripture.

We'll do it today as we talk about creation and we're gonna get into creation days 145, and 6. We'll talk about some dinosaurs and dragons and things like that, Adam and Eve, how old's the earth, and so on and so forth. We, I'm not gonna take a lot of time on review. I'm gonna leave.

this to you guys. we are going to jump. Right into the material for today. So let me skip by a lot of this.

Alright. What do you hope we will discuss in this class? You guys just saw a real quick flyby of some of the things that we're gonna be covering. But let me just take a moment to hear from you.

As you guys look over what, we're gonna be hitting Genesis and a lot of the key issues in the early parts of Genesis. But does anybody have anything where you're like, man, I really hope we cover this, Rachel? Yeah. Great.

So how to, how to get a context for sharing Christ. And bringing the gospel to our friends. And family Cool. Other things that you're hoping we'll cover.

Yeah, I can. The problem of evil. Great, yeah, we will hit that. Can God make a Rock so big that he can't lift it.

If God's all powerful. And God's good. He can stop evil, but evil still exists. Why is there evil in the world?

Say that part again. He is logical. That is right. Other things you guys are hoping, yes.

I thought I heard something from the baby. OK. Taking on it, OK. Biblical parenting, yes, we will hit that.

Definitely. Anything else you guys? Yeah, cool. So the timeline of what the Bible says, what evolution says, and we'll actually hit that this morning.

So yeah, that's great. Cool. All right, well, let's jump into some things here., let me, let me start by asking, we're gonna ask a couple of questions. what theology do you think, we've been covering Genesis with, in our preaching time.

what theology do you think arises out of Genesis 1 and 2? Or what are some things that Just in a first pass by. You think would arise out of those chapters theologically. OK, how God relates to man.

Good. Yeah, Cynthia. Yes, the existence of God comes right there, right there in Genesis. Yeah, Kim.

Good. So his dominion, his sovereignty. Excellent. What else would be some theological points, Joe?

OK, great. So how does God relate to man and nature? Mhm. Anything else?

OK, just the fact that he's the creator of everything comes right out of Genesis. Yes. Yeah, there's definitely the plurality of God or there's the seed form of the Trinity, right? In Genesis 1:26.

Let us make man in our image according to our likeness. in the first two verses, there seems to be seed forms or hints at the Trinity. Definitely, so we've got the Trinity in the first two chapters of Genesis. Anything else?

All right, let me suggest a couple of other things. It seems like we see the Trinity and its seed form, especially when we interpret the first two chapters through the New Testament eyes of the New Testament. we have the theology of death is established. Where death comes from is right there in Genesis 2, that death is not just a part of biological processes, it is something that was instituted by God for sin.

We see the theology of marriage established. In Genesis chapter 2, that marriage is something that God created between a man and a woman, the very first couple. It's not something that just evolved, or it's not just a social construct. It was created by God.

We see the doctrine of sin. In chapter 3 verse 6, we see Adam and Eve turning Deciding or giving in to the temptation of the devil and turning themselves over to sin. And all the consequences of that is sin something that we Can discern. outside of the Bible, would we be able to develop a theology of sin outside of special revelation?

Without special revelation. I don't think so, because sin is against a person, that person is God. God is a spiritual being. So we're talking about metaphysical matters.

you could just go into a laboratory and use the scientific method to arrive at sin. Sin is a matter of Revelation And so we see that in the, in the first opening chapters of Genesis. the gospel is right there in the opening chapters of Genesis. God says, if you eat of the tree and logic and evil, you will surely die.

they do eat. God shows up on the scene. He talks about how that the head of the serpent will be crushed by the heel of some future representative, and then he clothes Adam and Eve in what? Skins of an animal.

And so you have blood, you have a substitution right there in the opening chapters of Genesis. And then you also have the doctrine of clothing. Why do we wear clothes? Do we wear clothes because all the hair eventually fell off of our body over the course of the evolutionary process, or do we wear clothes because God made clothes for Adam and Eve?

In the opening chapters of Genesis, you have some very clear theological statements on those matters, the existence of God, as you guys mentioned, The nature of God and the Trinity, death, marriage, sin, the gospel, clothing, God's sovereignty, his, his, creation and so on. So there's a lot of theology in these first two chapters. So how important do you think Genesis 1 and 2 are to the Christian faith? I would say, yeah, and that's what we're going to be arguing is that based upon our bibliology and that we've covered in the last 13 weeks.

That all scripture is given by inspiration and that the scripture is sufficient. and all scripture is inerrant and all the various things that we talked about in the class. These first two chapters are essential, essential to a biblical worldview, and so that's, that's where we're going to begin in this course. OK, let's Let's go ahead and and look at a a video.

that's gonna kick us off on God as Creator, and then we'll come back and start. Studying the word Do I have to go one more? One more. All right.

But I should have thought And I show up with. Yeah. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form and void. And darkness was upon the face of the deep.

And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light. And there was light. And God saw the light that it was good.

And God divided the light from the darkness, and God called the light day and the darkness he called night, and the evening and the morning were the first day. And God said, let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters and let it divide the waters from the waters. And it was so. And God called the firmament heaven.

And the evening and the morning. With the 2nd day. And God said, let the waters under the heaven 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 gathering together of the waters he called seas, and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind. Whose seed is in itself upon the earth.

And it was so, and the evening and the morning were the 3rd day. And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years. And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth.

And it was so. And God made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night. And God saw that it was good. In the evening and the morning.

With a 4th day. And God said, let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that has life and birds that may fly above the earth across the face of the firmament of heaven. And God blessed them, saying, be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters and the seas and let birds multiply in the earth. In the morning with a 5th day.

And God said, Let the earth bring forth a living creature after its kind, livestock and creeping thing and beast of the earth after its kind. And it was so. And God said, Let us make man in our image after our likeness. So God created man in His own image.

In the image of God, He created him. Male and female, he created them. And God blessed them, and God said to them, Be fruitful and multiply and build the earth and subdue it. And have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.

And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. In the evening and the morning. With the 6th day. Pretty sweet.

Yeah, I just wanted to put that together for you guys today. That's a complete joke. No, that was, that's just a straightforward reading of Genesis one. So let's open up there.

Let's take a look at Genesis 1 as we're going to begin our seven seas, our chronological look. At the Bible, starting with. Creation. And so we're gonna start.

Write in Genesis. One. Actually, what? That's right.

Let's, let's actually open up to Hebrews first. Sorry about that. Hebrews 11. Then we'll go to Genesis one.

Hebrews 11, I'm gonna start in verse 1. Now, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, for by it, the elders obtained a good testimony. By faith, we understand that the worlds were framed. By the word of God So that the things which are seen.

We're not made Of things which are visible. So Let me ask you guys a couple of questions. Is there a debate? Is, is the debate for origins a matter of science or a matter of faith?

According to this passage. Yeah, I want to suggest that it's a matter of faith. And the reason it's a matter of faith is because there was only one being that was there. And that is God.

None of us were there. you can't use the scientific method to To determine creation. What we have is God was there and he reports to us. He gives special revelation on what happened and, and the writer of Hebrews tells us by faith, we understand.

So we can understand what happened, not because we were there and we observed it. But because God has revealed it to us by faith, we cannot just sit in darkness and hope and guess, but by faith, we can understand. What is it that we can understand? That the worlds were framed, how?

By the word of God. That God spoke and he created the worlds. He created the universe. So that the things which are seen were not made of things which are visible.

How does the writer of Hebrews know that the things that we see were not made of things that are seen? In other words, the writer of Hebrews could look out at his time at the world just like we do today and look at the sun, he can look at the moon, the stars, he can look at the animals, can look out at the whole world and make this statement emphatically and say, we understand this, we know this, we don't doubt this, that the things which are seen were made of things which were not made of things which are visible.

How does he know that? Say it again.

Yeah, he knows it by faith. That's by faith. And, and so the writer of Hebrews here. There's a couple of different things that, that he's arguing.

He could be saying, I've received direct defined revelation now as I'm writing this passage to give you this information. but I don't know that that would fit the context because as the writer continues the rest of the narrative, he begins to speak of Abel and Cain and Enoch and Noah and Abraham and Jacob and Sarah and so on and where do we get all of that information? Where does all that come from? Comes from Genesis.

And so I think a way that we can summarize this passage, the writer of Hebrews is telling us That by faith, we believe what has been reported to us by God in the Torah, specifically in the Book of Genesis. that the worlds were framed by the word of God. And when you go back to Genesis, as we just heard, the Bible says, God said, let us make man in our image according to our likeness or let there be light. And that's exactly what Genesis reports is that God spoke and these things took place.

And so he says, by faith, we know this. We read in the Torah, God has reported to us how the worlds were framed, and we know that God didn't take preexisting material and form pre-existing material. Into the worlds. God spoke.

And it was there. So with that, let's turn back, let's turn back to the information or the source of Hebrews material. The writer of Hebrews. Appears to have a source as he's quoting all these different historical accounts.

Let's go back. 2 Genesis chapter 1. Genesis chapter one. Let's just read Let's just read the first two verses together.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void and darkness was on the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. Actually, let's go to verse 3 and then God said, let there be light, and there was light. Applying our approach, our hermeneutical approach, we introduced last quarter.

and as you guys have studied this passage together with us and through the preaching and in care groups, what type of literature would you say Genesis one, purports to be? Does this sound like an account of a poem? Or another type of writing. Yeah, it seems to develop itself as a historical piece of literature.

we have all the time indicators of history. We have characters that are later mentioned. in, other, other contexts. The text reads very much like an account of history.

it does not have, remember, I'm trying to think in this class if we've talked about this yet. I'm not sure what, can anybody tell me, maybe through your own study if we haven't talked about this class, what is one of the foundational, components of Hebrew poetry. Parallelism, yeah. there's not so much, there's, when you look at the Hebrew poetry, there's not a lot of rhyme schemes, but what you do see is couplets.

And for an example, let's, let's go ahead and turn to Proverbs real quick. Let's take a look at Proverbs. And let's say, let's try. Let's say, let's try Proverbs chapter 2.

Proverbs chapter 2 verse 1. My son, if you receive my words and treasure my commands within you, So that you incline your ear to wisdom and apply your heart to understanding. There's another couplet. Yes, if you cry out for discernment and lift up your voice for understanding, just in those first three verses, what you see is these couplets and sometimes we get what we call synonymous parallelism where the first part of the couplet or the second part of the couplet basically equals the first part of the couplet but just with maybe different terms.

Sometimes you have contrasting. parallelism where the second part of the couplet is the opposite of what is said in the first part and sometimes you have what's like a stair step type of couplet and, so there's that type. there's also, There's types of poetry like saying in Psalm 119 where every line begins with a letter of the Hebrew alphabet. So you would start with an oleph and then the whole first stanza starts, every line starts with an oleph, it's equivalent to our letter A.

and then you'll have some poems where it'll just, it'll just go all the way through the Hebrew alphabet. And so you don't have rhyme schemes but A Hebrew reader would be able to very quickly pick up upon poetry. and even when we're reading poetry, that doesn't necessarily mean that there's no literal interpretation within the poetry. There's just a lot of, figures of speech and so on and so forth, but even figures of speech are meant to drive towards, a literal meaning, but there's none of those traditional indicators of poetry here in these opening chapters.

In fact, Genesis 1 and 2 and 3 and so on, all of it. Fits the traditional methods or the, what we would consider the traditional approach to historical narrative. I'll give you one example of a very common device in Hebrew historical narrative. his Hebrew historical narrative, it's very common.

To get a chapter that will give the overview. And then there'll be, the historical narrative will go back and focus in on particulars. Just this last week, Pastor Milton went over chapter what? Chapter 10.

And in chapter 10, we have the table of nations. We have this overview of how all of the nations spread out. This morning, you're gonna find that in chapter 11, now it begins to focus in on one aspect or the very beginning of that spreading out of the nations. This is very common.

In Hebrew narrative, historical narrative. Here's an overview of the historical occurrence. Now we're gonna focus in on particulars. See the same exact thing in Genesis 1 and 2.

Here's an overview of what happened on day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4, and so on and then you get to chapter 2 and there's a focus in on particulars, very common historical narrative device. And so, so we're arguing that this reads like history. What period of time does this passage describe? In the beginning.

Yeah, so we don't, other than what the text reveals, it just says in the beginning. So when, when we see the word beginning, we would think what? The beginning. So whatever's being described, this seems to be, we have Adam and Eve that are, that come up in a few verses.

We have animals, we have earth, we have sun. Everything that comes after verse one seems to come after the beginning. Would you agree? Say in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth and then everything else that comes afterwards seems to come after the beginning.

And so we're getting a a description of historically what happened in the beginning. Who is doing the creating according to verse two? Yeah, we have God and the Spirit of God, are involved. verse one tells us that God created what?

The heavens and the earth. Good. And how did the various parts of creation come into existence according to the text? He spoke, yeah, as you read throughout this text, God speaks and things happen.

God, he says, God said, let there be light, and there is light. So we're gonna do an activity and a little bit about creation Week. What, what phrases or words do we see repeated in this text? OK, yeah, we see it throughout the chapter, we, we see it as good.

Then God said, Yes, evening and morning, it's repeated over and over again. Yes, let there be according to their kind, and it was so. So there's a, a, a lot of repeated phrases. what would you say is the main point if we're just to summarize just what's on the page?

What's the main point of this passage? Yeah, if we're just trying to, to summarize exactly what the text says, just try to boil it down to a sentence. God created the universe and everything in it. Out of nothing In 6 days by simply speaking.

Let me say that again. God created the universe and everything in it, out of nothing in six days by simply speaking. I think that's a summary that just tries to pull its information right from the text. I don't think we're trying to insert anything into the summary.

we're just trying to say exactly. What God seems to be saying in this passage. He's creating. The universe 6 days, speaking it into existence.

What does this passage tell us about God based upon that fact? Yeah, so God must be before the beginning. If, if he's there at the beginning, he must exist before the beginning. Good.

What else? Yeah, he is all powerful, omnipotent. The type of power and force for somebody just to speak and then there is light. For someone to speak and there is the earth to speak and there are animals, just incredible power.

So we see the attributes of God. let's see. Let's take a look. What are we doing on time?

Let's take a look at a couple particulars. In verse one, we see that God created. The heavens. In the earth.

The heavens and the earth. What does this mean? God created the heavens. And the earth.

What do you think heavens means? Does this mean that he created the immediate abode of God like we die and go to heaven? Is it just talking he created this spiritual area where departed souls go to, they go to heaven. OK, yeah, it could be the universe, could be different places in scripture.

It seems like heavens refers to the stars and the area outside of the Earth's atmosphere perhaps. And then the earth and everything that's under it. I want to suggest that the heavens and earth. is, is probably.

A way to describe everything in the universe. Similar to saying, one time When it rains at our house, the backyard, our backyard turns into Lake Berry. We don't have very good drainage back there. And one of my children, my one of my six year old children, which seven-year-old children, which will remain nameless.

We frequently go out into the backyard and participate in Lake Berry. And if we're not, if we're not keeping an eye on things, it only takes a few minutes before he is covered head to toe in mud. Head to toe. Now, when I say head to toe, do that just his head and just his toe have mud on it?

What do by that? Yeah, all of Sammy has been, oh, I'm sorry, sorry about that. All of Sammy has been covered with mud, head to toe, right? And that's a similar type of use of language.

I think that we have here with heavens and earth. We have, when we think of heavens, we're thinking of the heights and then when we think of earth, it's not uncommon for the Bible to speak of earth is like the lower parts. And so we're talking about everything from the heights to the low parts, God created it all. Let's look at a couple.

I'm gonna actually just reference these because of time. Jeremiah 23:24, God says, do I not fill heaven and earth? Is God saying that he just fills the, the star space and he just fills the land? No, it's, he's saying I feel everything.

it's similar to like a phrase like top to bottom or bow to stern, everywhere. see, Jeremiah 33:25, speaks of the ordinances of heaven and earth. Psalm 69:34 says, let heaven and earth praise Him. So is that saying just the stars and just the planet?

Said praise God No, it's top to bottom. Let everything praise the Lord. let's look at a couple of other passages that, indicate, the. The participation of the whole Trinity.

Let's take a look at John 1:3. Go ahead and turn there. So we've looked at Genesis, a couple of verses in Genesis. Let's See how John picks up.

The same theme and underneath the inspirational Holy Spirit gives us some more data. We'll start in verse one. In the beginning, same phrase, right? So if you've read Genesis, Any, any good Jewish.

reader and any Christian who's been reading his, Old Testament in the Septuagint, as soon as you see in the beginning, you already know what we're, where we're going. In the beginning was the word. The Word was with God, the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.

We find out later that the Word is whom? Jesus Christ verse 14 says the word became flesh walt among us. Then in verse 3, all things were made through Him that is the word, and without him, nothing was made that was made. So, according to verse 3, who made the world?

Who made everything? Jesus Christ. So Genesis tells us in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. John 1:3 tells us in the beginning, the Word created everything.

There seems to be an equivalent equivalent between God and the Word. let's take a look at Hebrews 1:2. We're gonna do some Bible drills here over the last few minutes. Hebrews 1:2.

And we'll start in verse one. God, who at various times in various ways spoke in times past to the fathers, by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom he has appointed heir of what? All things through whom he also made the Worlds And so God made the world through Him, Jesus Christ. Look at Colossians.

Colossians chapter one. And let's go Colossians one. 16 and 17. For by him all things were created.

Context, Jesus. For by him all things were created that are in heaven and on earth. There's our phrase again, heavens and earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones, dominions, principalities, powers, all things were created through him and for him, and he is before all things and in him all things consist. And so we see in the creation passage as we read it through the eyes of the New Testament, the glass of the New Testament, that we have the God involved, clearly the Father, we have the Spirit hovering over the deep.

We have Jesus Christ in the New Testament being spoken of as participating and upholding all things. And so, and then we have Jesus existing. Before all things. So, as we've talked about previously, in our attributes of God section, God is eternal.

He has no beginning, we'll have no end, but his creation is not eternal. He had a beginning. Before God created, there was no space, no time, no matter. it's very difficult for us to understand this in our minds, but, the Bible reveals that in the beginning, God created.

We don't have eternal matter, we have created matter, eternal God creating eternal matter. Now, This begs the question, if, if the text says God spoke. And then it was there. how does that mesh with what so many people, believe happened today.

We look at the Bible and we believe by faith that God formed the worlds out of nothing, merely by speaking. And yet the average. a person that's graduating from our colleges today or what people are being taught in their public schools, they're gonna be taught that our universe is 13 billion years old, that the Earth is about 4.4.5 billion years old. And that it did not, was not spoken into existence, that God, that the universe has just evolved and everything that we see has come about by a very slow process.

The one thing that there does seem to be agreement on though is According to the Big Bang theory, there was nothing or somehow There was a bang And then material materialized about 13 billion years ago and then we have the universe, the kickstart of the universe. And so there does seem to be some agreement. On that And as we're going to be looking at over the next few weeks, many believers, many Christians. would look at their Bible and look at what they're studying in their science books and say, we can't really take the Bible at face value.

We have to first of all, prove the Bible. We have to prove the Bible scientifically and if science doesn't seem to support our faith starting point, then we need to just frankly admit That maybe that's not what Genesis was written for. Maybe Genesis wasn't really meant to tell us. About our origins, maybe it's poetry.

Maybe it's, a good spiritual story for encouragement because science seems to be pretty clear. Let's, let's look at a a scientist, Paul Davies, physicist and evolutionist in his book, The Edge of Infinity, describes the Big Bang in this way. So this is a physicist. Expert in Big bang theory.

Say this, the Big Bang represents the instantaneous suspension of physical laws. The sudden abrupt flash of lawlessness that allowed something to come out of nothing. It represents a true miracle. Here's my question for Mr.

Davies. Why is this more scientific than than in the beginning God created? Again, let's read his statement. This is coming from a physicist.

The Big Bang represents the instantaneous suspension of physical loss. Is that science? No, he's frankly admitting that this, he's now delving into philosophy, what we call metaphysics. He's trying to answer.

He's trying to deal with the question that cannot be. Circumscribed by the scientific method and in that respect, I actually have a lot of respect for this statement. Because he's telling us that when we're talking about the, the beginning, when we're talking about the Big Bang, it's outside of the realm of science. It's the suspension of physical laws, the sudden abrupt flash of lawlessness that allowed something to come out of nothing.

He's admitting ex nihilo, something came out of nothing, and it represents a true miracle. So I have a lot of respect for this statement that he's basically saying that we frankly acknowledge that the Big Bang, the kickstart of our universe, is a question that goes beyond science. And it isn't any more scientific than in the beginning God created. The difference is, is God was there, Paul Davies wasn't.

And God tells us exactly how things began. let's, actually, what, let's turn to, let me see how much time we have. We have 4 minutes. Let's turn to Psalm 33.

And then we might need to save the order of the universe till next week. We'll see. Maybe I can give you the whole order of the universe in just a few minutes. That's supposed to be a joke.

Psalm 33. Boy, I'm really rolling this morning. Psalm 33:1. Rejoice in the Lord, you righteous, so praise from the upright is beautiful.

Praise the Lord with the heart, make melody to Him with an instrument of 10 strings. Sing to Him a new song, play skillfully with a shout of joy, for the word of the Lord is right and all his work is done in truth. He loves righteousness and justice. The earth is full of the goodness of the Lord.

We would all just look at that passage, one of my favorite passages in all the Bible and say, Amen. And then it tells us in verse 6, by the word of the Lord, the heavens were made. And all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. How were the worlds made?

By his word, by his mouth. He gathers the waters of the sea together as a heap and lays up the deep in the storehouses. Let all the earth fear the Lord and all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him. Why should we stand in awe of Him?

Why should we fear and worship God? Verse 9, for he spoke and it was done. He commanded. And it stood fast.

He spoke. He commanded. End of story Again, this is in a piece of poetry right here, but this seems to comport with Genesis and it begins, it's, it's a foundation for worship. We're to worship God, we're to worship and fear Almighty God.

One of the bases for that worship is the fact that God called the whole universe and everything in it into existence by merely speaking, and it stood. Very important passage. Here, we'll do our, our flyby in 1 minute and 30 seconds on the Big Bang versus creation and then we'll come back and review this next week. Here's, here's, here's a problem.

We could say, It's clear that there is a difference between what the Bible says about God speaking all things into existence and what the common theory says about the Big Bang and things evolving. And many Christians today in all sincerity would try to say, well, God just used the Big Bang and used evolution in order to accomplish his purposes. But as we're gonna develop more next week, you run into some huge problems if we're gonna take our literal, straightforward approach to the Bible in the, in the Genesis.

On the left hand side, you have evolution.

On the right hand side, you have the Bible. Evolution says the sun and stars existed before the earth. The Bible says the earth was created before the sun and stars. Big problem.

Evolution says the sun is Earth's first light. The Bible says the light on Earth came before the sun. Number 3, 1st life equals marine organisms. In the Bible, first life equals land plants.

On the left, reptiles predate birds. On the right, birds predate land reptiles. On the left, land mammals predate whales. On the right, whales predate land mammals, animals.

On the left, disease death precede man's sin. On the right, disease death are the result from man's sin. It's completely the opposite. And so how do our brothers and sisters who believe that God used evolution get around this?

There's really The main way to get around this is you have to say Genesis one is not a straightforward historical account. It contradicts scientific theories of today and so we must interpret the Bible not according to the way that we would interpret the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We must interpret this section not according to the way that we would interpret Jesus' death on the cross. Not according to the way that we would interpret the virgin birth of Jesus Christ.

Not according to any of the ways that we would interpret the gospels. Now we're going to go to what seems to be a straightforward narrative, historical reading, and we're going to now interpret it as poetic or some other way in order to get it to mesh with current scientific theory. In my opinion, that's a big problem. As we looked at a couple of weeks ago, it's not like you can just set aside creation as a non-essential doctrine and make that poetry an allegory and secure the virgin birth of Jesus Christ, his baptism, his death, burial and resurrection, his soon return, and suddenly keep all of that literal.

And that's exactly where theologians have gone. The German theologians of the 1800s tried to move into higher criticism and try to answer the the intellectuals of their day and tried to secure the core of Christianity and it wasn't more than a generation before they had given up the whole core. They've given up the atonement, they've given up the res literal resurrection of Christ. And so it's, it's tough to, to keep both.

You can't have your cake and eat it too. Right? All right. Any, we'll, we'll go back and review and you guys have a handout actually that you can run through, on your own this week for homework and compare, the order of evolution with the order of creation in Genesis one.

any comments, questions, criticisms, or concerns? It's gotta be one. Yeah, yeah, I am too. Really looking forward to it.

So next week, we're gonna, we're gonna go back and start reviewing creation days 1 to 4. so we're gonna study those together. here's where this class, what we're, what we're gonna do, that wasn't directly dealt with with the sermon series is, is we're gonna be trying to look at the 1st 4 days of creation and also try to see what other people say about the 1st 4 days of creation that don't believe in taking Genesis as a straightforward reading. And so we want to do so, so you, you understand what the arguments are and, and what are the responses apologetically to the reading that we are giving to Genesis and why it's important.

And so we want to arm you with that information. we're gonna be dealing with some apologetics, on creation and so on and so forth. And, And we want, we want to be able to frankly, be able to answer and, and talk to people in our world that have questions about, evolution. I think I've mentioned this in the past, but, It seems like as I, as I, more and more as I'm doing evangelism.

I don't even have to bring it up. Evolution just comes up. People, one of their first arguments against the gospel is evolution. And I, I try to bring up sin and Christ and, and his substitutionary atonement.

And one of the first points of attack is how can I believe all that nonsense when you've got a Bible that talks about sixth-day creation and God creating. all the world with his spoken word and you guys were dinosaurs and you've got this worldwide flood and all that nonsense. And, that becomes the argument to reject Jesus Christ. So anyway, we're gonna try to arm you guys with, with how to respond to that.

All right, let's go ahead and pray and I'll, I'll be up here to talk to you any questions you guys have afterwards. Lord, thank you so much for your word. we thank you for just your power that's represented when we look around the world and we see that there, everything is, is, is here and when we look at the Bible, we see how it came to be. by faith, we see that the worlds were made, as you spoke, all things into existence, not from pre-material, but from nothing.

And we thank you that we can believe you. You were there. You've reported to us faithfully and that when we look at the world, that reality comports with what your word says and we just pray that we'd be able to go out in confidence and in humility and speak your truth and to fear you and worship you. And we pray that more and more that more and more people in our world, would be drawn to worship you because you have spoke all things into existence and it is stood firm.

In Christ's name, we pray. Amen.