The Great God

Well, for our time of study in God's word this morning, let me invite you to turn in your Bibles to Genesis. Genesis chapter one. And my goal this morning will be to cover Genesis chapter one verses one. Through 5.

Today is the genesis of our study through Genesis. I know that's lame, but I've been itching to say that. The word Genesis means beginning. And that is essentially the first word that we encounter in the book of Genesis, the first noun, I, I would say.

and that title fits because Genesis is the book of beginnings. In this book, we find the beginnings of the universe, the beginnings of the sun, and the moon and the stars, the beginnings of plant and animal life. The beginnings of mankind, the beginning of marriage and family, the beginning of sin, the beginning of redemption, the beginnings of nations and languages, and the beginnings of God's plan to bless all of the nations of the earth through his chosen people, the descendants of Abraham.

This is why Genesis is called Genesis.

It is the story of beginnings, and we're blessed to be launching on this journey of the study of all of these beginnings and more in the Book of Genesis. Moses, by most counts, would have written the Book of Genesis at some point. During the wilderness wanderings of the children of Israel, at some point prior to them entering into the promised land. Apparently, Moses felt that the Jews, in order to be equipped to set up life for themselves in the Land of Promise and to live well, he felt like they needed to know history.

A history given to them by God, a history told to them from God's perspective. A history that includes God in the telling, not a secular history. A history that extends all the way back to the very origins of life. One thing we can learn from this fact alone, Is the value of history.

The history that God gives to us. There were other histories around during Moses' day. There were multiple creation accounts and flood accounts and various histories that abounded in the world at this time. But once this Book of Genesis was produced, only one of them was right.

Only one of them was inspired. Only one of them was true. It's important, I think we all know this, that we let God give us history. We should want to know history from God's perspective.

The story of human origins is relevant. To modern life today, and we should want to know God's version of the story of human origins. If the story of human origins was not relevant to the Jews in Moses' day, as they were about to enter the land of promise and set up life for themselves, then God would not have wasted his time. Giving this history to them.

And likewise, today, we stand at a critical juncture in our culture in which we similarly need to go back to the starting point that we find in the Book of Genesis. If there ever was a time in which we as a people need to stand at attention. And allow God to tell us his version of the history of the world. The only true version of history it is today.

We stand as recipients of an amazing Salvation that is designed to rectify a fall. That actually occurred in Genesis 3. It's an ancient problem that we have with sin. And if you want to understand the gospel, you must go back to Genesis.

Today in our culture, we are witnessing the negation and devaluing of gender in our culture. What is gender? Is gender merely a social construct that has been foisted upon us by previous generations? If you want to understand gender issues, you must go back to Genesis and start your train of thought there.

We are in a culture today that has made a norm out of divorce. A culture in which the marriages that are surviving are usually settled for marriages, rather than the repositories of glory that they were intended by God to be. Also in our culture today, we're witnessing a radical redefinition of marriage taking place such that the definition includes same-sex unions. What is marriage anyway?

Is marriage merely a social construct that people came up with in previous generations, or is it something created by God for a definite purpose? Does marriage have to be male and female, or does it not matter? If you wish to understand marriage and God's vision for marriage, you must go back to Genesis and start your train of thought there. Also in our culture today, we're facing a culture that accepts a materialistic evolutionary worldview.

that is pushing the outer boundaries of what that means. Seeking to apply the Darwinian paradigm to every aspect of life. Just this week, I watched a respectful exchange between a Christian and an atheist at what was called a reason rally for college students. And in that exchange, the atheist said these words, I do not have value.

I am irrelevant to the universe. I'm just a speck of dust. This Christian talking to the atheist was trying to tell this atheist, you do have value, and this is their response. Is this true?

What this atheist says? Did we just evolve through a process of evolutionary chance? Are we just beings that happen to be a little more evolved than apes? Or is there something special?

About being human. If you wish to understand. The answer to the question of where we came from and what it means to be human, you must go back to Genesis and start your train of thought there. The list could go on But the problem in our culture today is that our society has progressively moved away from the revelation of God's word.

Like the Book of Genesis, and as it has done so, the worldview that once held certain tendencies at bay. is now largely gone. And we're witnessing the philosophical and the moral disintegration that happens when you remove a truly biblical understanding of what is taught. In the book of Genesis and elsewhere in the Bible.

We must go back to Genesis, and we're blessed as a church to go back to Genesis for quite some time in the series. And when I say that we need to go back to Genesis and begin our train of thought there, I'm not introducing a novel concept. If we learn anything from the New Testament, We learned the value of going back to the Genesis account and starting our train of thought from there. But just real quick, notice how relevant the Book of Genesis is in the New Testament.

In Mark chapter 10, verses 6 through 8, Jesus goes back to the beginning of marriage to address the divorce and remarriage issue. In 1 Corinthians 11:7 through 12, Paul goes back to the creation of Adam and Eve to provide guidance on the head covering issue. And to explain the role of the man and the woman in the marriage relationship. In 1 Timothy chapter 3, verses 12 to 15, Paul goes back to the creation of Adam and Eve, and to the account of the fall in order to provide insight on the role of men and women in the church.

By the way, is that chapter 2 or 3? Anyone know? I, I may have gotten that wrong. Is it 2?

All right, yeah, it's 1 Timothy chapter 2. In Romans, chapter 5, verses 12 to 19, read those verses. Paul goes back to the fall of Adam in explaining to us our present problem with sin and death and how Christ is the second Adam and addresses that. In Ephesians chapter 5, verses 31 and 32, Paul goes back to Genesis 2 to explain what our marriages should be, and what the nature of Christ's relationship is to his church.

If you wish to understand the nature of your relationship to Jesus, and the nature of the church's relationship to Christ Himself, you need to go back to Genesis 2 to understand that. And James chapter 3, verse 9, James goes back to Genesis 1:27 to show us that God created our fellow man in the image of God, and he explains how that fundamental reality about our fellow man should shape the way that we speak to and about them. It turns out that I, and you, and our fellow human beings are royalty.

In a far greater sense than any royalty that any human could ever confer upon us, and this should affect the way that we treat one another.

In Colossians 1:16, Paul tells us that all things were created by Christ and for Christ, and this should shape what our lives are all about. These are just a few examples from the New Testament, which is our model for life. It should be if we call ourselves Christians, far be it from us, to try to have a faith that doesn't go back to the Genesis account of origins, a Christian faith that ignores Genesis. is not a New Testament faith.

In fact, it's not a Christian faith at all. And so we're coming back or coming to Genesis, and we come to the very first verse of Genesis chapter one. And the overarching theme of these verses and the verses that follow is the greatness of God. So the title of the message is the great God.

You should have a handout. that is in your bulletin that can help you as you follow along this morning. In these verses, we get a front row seat to what God was doing at the very, very beginning. And there's no way to look at these verses and conclude anything other than the fact That the theme of these verses is the greatness of God.

In the beginning, God. Moses says, Let's read these verses. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.

Then 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. And God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day.

Genesis chapter one is all about God. One writer says that God is the soloist. Of the creation event. He is the source, He is the first cause of everything.

He is the hero of the creation story. As one commentator puts it, the entire Book of Genesis is about God from first to last, and to read it any other way is to misread it. I was blessed to observe that pretty much every commentator that I read, all said the same thing. This book is all about God.

The creation account, Genesis 1 is all about God from beginning to end. And so with the time that we have, I want us to look at verses 1 through 5 and observe 6 manifestations of the greatness of God, the greatness of your God. The God that you have a relationship with, if you're a Christian, we're gonna observe six manifestations of the greatness of that God that you get to walk with and have a relationship with each day. These are very practical manifestations that should make a difference in how we think.

And how we live our lives, from day to day. But let's look at these as we work through verses 1 through 5. 1st of all, God's greatness is manifested in his name. His greatness is manifested in his name.

The text says, in the beginning, God In the beginning, in other words, in the beginning of time, the beginning of the material creation when it was created, at that beginning point in time, there was God. The word for God, the Hebrew word is Elohim, Elohim, a name for God which occurs 35 times in this chapter alone. The name Elohim is actually a plural form of the Hebrew word ale. And yet, the verb created is singular.

Right away we observe that God is both a plurality and a singularity at the same time. Hence, we can say that the very beginnings of the scriptural revelation of the Trinity, is found in verse one of Genesis chapter one, and it's gonna become more pronounced later in the chapter when God says, let us make man in our image. And so Elohim is a word being a plural that is big enough to house the doctrine. Of the Trinity.

Having said that, the plural at the end of the name for God here is more likely what's called a plural of majesty, a plural of majesty or a plural of ultimateness. Back in this day, if you wanted to say that someone or something was the ultimate in a particular category, you would use the plural to convey that. And the Old Testament is filled with such examples. Let me just give you a few examples.

The Hebrew word for animal is Behemah. That's singular for animal, Behemah. But there is an animal in the book of Job called Behemoth. And that oath ending is a feminine plural ending.

It's one animal that is literally called animals. Behemoth And what that plural means is not that it's more than one animal, this is the plural of majesty or ultimateness, denoting that this was no ordinary animal, this is the ultimate animal. Whatever is meant by animal, this is the ultimate in that category, and the plural is used to convey that. In Psalm 118 verse 7, the psalmist says, Jehovah literally is my helpers.

That might sound odd, but that's literally what the text says. And what the psalmist is saying by using the plural there is that God is no ordinary helper. Whatever is meant by the word helper, God is the ultimate in that category. He is the consummate helper.

In Proverbs 9:10, Solomon says the knowledge of the Holy One is understanding. In the Hebrew text, it literally reads the knowledge of the Holy One's plural is understanding. But again, this is the plural of majesty. Solomon is quite literally saying the knowledge of the ultimately holy one.

is understanding. The Hebrew word for Lord, our Master is Adon. Adon, that's the singular, but Jehovah is referred to as Adonai, and that I ending is a form of the plural at the end of Adon. So every time you see Adonai in the Old Testament, You could translate it as Lord par excellence, or Lord of all or ultimate Lord.

So that's what's happening here already in Genesis chapter one, verse one with Elohim, that's the masculine plural ending that E on the end there. God is not just ale, he is Elohim. He is not just God, he is the most excellent God. Whatever a God should be, he is consummate God.

God does not just fit. He doesn't just happen to fit the definition of God, he is the definition of God. And so just in the word choice of how the writer designates God denotes His greatness. Number 2, God's majesty, or God's greatness is manifested in his pre-existence before creation.

The text says, in the beginning, God. In the beginning, There was God In the Noah movie that came out. Last year, the movie begins with the words, in the beginning, there was nothing. That's how their creation account.

goes, I don't think that's an improvement on Genesis chapter one verse one. I'm not sure why they looked at Genesis 1:1 and felt it needed to be improved upon, but the truth is that in the beginning, there was something, there was someone, there was God. In the beginning, God, Moses says. That's how the story of creation begins.

The writer of Genesis is taking us back to the very beginning of all things, to the very beginnings of the heavens and the earth. And when the curtains open on this amazing beginning, we see that God is already there. God existed before anything else existed. Carl Sagan in his book entitled Cosmos begins with these words, the cosmos, meaning the universe, the material universe is all there is or has been or will be.

He would say in the beginning, There was the cosmos. That's his version of the creation account. Moses would beg to differ with Carl Sagan. In Genesis 1:1, Moses is saying in the beginning, before the heavens and the earth were created, there was God.

And if there's any doubt about that, listen to Moses' own commentary on Genesis 1:1 in Psalm 90:2. It's actually a Psalm that's in the psalter that was written by Moses himself. And listen to what Moses says to God before the mountains were brought forth, or before ever you had formed the earth and the world from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. In the beginning, There was God.

We parents try to convince our kids that they should respect us because we pre-existed them, don't we? we don't use that word pre-existence, but we say, hey, I'm older than you. I've been around the block a few more times than you have, and we hope that they will just be stunned by that announcement, and fall at our feet, ready to hang on every word that we speak to them. we hope that we will gain more credibility, that they will see the value of our wisdom by understanding that fact.

But what, this is infinitely more true with God. As God says elsewhere, I am the first, I am the last, and beside me, there is no God. This God who pre-existed us and all things in the material universe, we should care very much about what he has to say and value what he has to say above what anyone else who comes along might have to say. There's a 3rd manifestation of God's greatness.

God's greatness is manifested in His creation. Of the universe. His greatness is manifested in his creation of the universe. The text says in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

The text tells us that God created the universe. The universe has not always existed, nor Did the universe bring itself into existence. In his book, The Grand Design, Stephen Hawking says this, listen to what he says, because there is such a law as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. He would say, if he were writing Genesis in the beginning, there was gravity.

And the universe because of gravity created itself from nothing. That is a radical faith assumption. By a man of great secular faith. But the Bible makes clear that the universe did not create itself.

God created the universe in the beginning of time as we know it, there was God, and God created the cosmos. He created the universe. He created the heavens and the earth. The word created, this is an interesting word, it's the Hebrew word Bara.

Which is translated, created in most accounts of Genesis 1:1. It's used in the Old Testament only with God as the subject. And it's rare that you see a word that's that consistent. There's always exceptions, but throughout the Old Testament, whenever you see Bara, God is always the one doing that in every single case.

Whatever it means to Baraa, it's something that only God does. This word is used 3 times in Genesis chapter 1, alone. It's used here to speak of God creating the heavens and the earth. It is used in verse 21 to speak of God creating the animals, and it is used in verse 27 to speak of God creating man in his image.

The idea of the term, as some writers say, is complete effortlessness, complete ease and effortlessness. That encounters no difficulty due to time constraints or lack of material. It is the freedom of a talented artist to do and to paint as he or she pleases. If you said to me, Milton, paint a rose, I, I would do my best, but I am limited by a lack of giftedness.

But someone who's an exceptional artist could draw and paint a beautiful rose and do it swiftly. It's with that freedom of an artist bursting with omnipotence that God barras, the heaven and the earth. But there's something else in this word Bara. As one commentator puts it, Bara indicates the creation of something altogether new and epoch-making.

So we can say that this word. Not only tells us something about the greatness of God to be able to create, but it also indicates something about how great what he is creating is. In fact, a Jewish commentator, Nehem Sarna, says this. Listen to what he says.

This word signifies that the product is absolutely novel and unexampled, that it depends solely on God for its coming into existence and it's beyond the human capacity to reproduce. And so, we're gonna see that as we go through Genesis one, God created the heavens and the earth, he created animals, he created us. Absolutely novel, unexampled that God could Bara tells us something of his greatness, and it tells us something of how great what He is creating is, including you. But here we see that God created the heavens and the earth.

He created the universe, as we know it. That's just an amazing thing. God created. He brought into existence the universe, the heavens and the earth.

The observable universe, scientists say is 93 billion light years across from one end to the other. Take the known universe and the diameter of that from one end to the other. is 93 billion light years across. Just imagine that if you were to go to one edge of the known universe, this is just the known universe.

And travel 186,000 miles a second for 93 billion years. That's how long it would take you to get from one end to the other of simply the known universe. The universe, the cosmos is unimaginably huge, and God is the one who bro it with total ease, the ease of an omnipotent artist. In Isaiah 40, I believe verse 12, the prophet tells us that God measured the universe, the heavens, with just the span of his hand.

So imagine that this universe that is 93 billion light years across, God pretty much just creates it and says, I'll make it about this big. I know that Isaiah is adapting himself to our understanding, but he wants us to see how immense God is. If this 93 billion light-year size universe is but the size of the span of the hand of God, then how big is God? What power must he possess to bring it all into existence out of nothing?

What worship is due to such a God from you and from me? How much do you and I value this God and every word that falls from his lips? That is recorded in his word. There's a 4th manifestation of God's greatness that we see in these verses, and that is, that is this, God's greatness is manifested in these verses in his loving care over his creation.

His greatness is manifested in his loving care over his creation. Verse 2, and the earth was formless and void and darkness was over the surface of the deep and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters. this is interesting. The, the Hebrew for formless and void.

is the expression tohu wabohu. OK? In fact, let's, let's say that together. Tohu wabohu.

One more time. Tohu wabohu. We're gonna make a song out of this. but it is poetic and, and just the overall feel and the sound of it, but it is rich with meaning.

It speaks of a place that is disordered. Uninhabitable and even chaotic. Think of your child's bedroom. If you want.

A, a, a visual of what creation looked like at this point of creation. Tohu speaks of that which is not yet put into shape. Which probably indicates that initially the Earth was not exactly the sphere that it is now. Bohu speaks of the fact that the earth was empty of life.

It was uninhabited initially. In fact, it was uninhabitable. Nothing could have lived here at this juncture of creation. We also see here that darkness was over the face of the deep and literally this reads, darkness was over the faces of the deep.

A placid body of water has one face, but this primeval ocean had many faces. In fact, the word deep is from the Hebrew word meaning to resound. Indicating the many faces of the resounding, tossing primeval ocean. This is not a place at this point where you would want to be.

One writer says that the language here indicates the surging, raging primeval waters as opposed to a monotonous peace and uniformity. All is not quiet on Earth at this point of creation. Over this stormy chaos was darkness, a blanket. Of deep darkness.

Darkness was over the face of the deep. Interestingly enough, there's, there's nothing said in Genesis about God creating the darkness. he does create light, but it doesn't say that he created darkness. If darkness is simply the absence of light, then darkness, we would think, doesn't need to be created, it just is.

However, interestingly, in Isaiah 45:7, write this reference down, we learned that God created the darkness also. It says the one who formed the light. And created darkness. I am the Lord who does all these.

So even darkness is a product of his handiwork. So here at this point, just looking at the, what, what is said up to this point, we have a picture, God created the heavens and the earth, but then there's some descriptions of the earth at this point of creation. And we have a picture of the Earth with 4 deficiencies, and when I say deficiencies, that's not a criticism. God's not finished.

He doesn't just stop there and say, hey, look, I'm done. This is great. No, there's a lot of work to be done. There are 4 what we can call quote unquote deficiencies.

The earth was shapeless at this point. It was uninhabited and uninhabitable. It was covered in darkness and it featured a chaotic primeval ocean. The earth looks nothing like it will look in 6 days.

The earth is about to undergo an amazing revolution in the course of 6 creation days. In fact, one writer puts it this way to help us to get a visual, just imagine God as the potter and the earth as the clay. Listen to what he says. Just as the potter when he wishes to fashion a beautiful vessel takes first of all, a lump of clay and places it upon his wheel in order to mold it according to his wish.

So the Creator first prepared for himself the raw material with a view to giving it afterwards order and life. It is this terrestrial state. That is called Tohu Wabohu. That's where we are at this point of creation.

And what, every day that, in fact, I was just driving on the freeway this morning that enjoying the beauty of the clouds and just how crisp and clean everything felt, even in the atmosphere. This is a beautiful morning. And every day that you and I look around in nature, we're seeing what this amazing potter. did with this darkened, watery, uninhabitable, shapeless, chaotic mass that it was.

At the end of verse one. If he could do that with an earth that was tohu wabohu, what can he do with you? The text tells us that the Spirit of God also was moving over the surface or literally the faces of Of the waters. The word for moving is the word used of a bird that is hovering over her chicks.

Moses, he uses this word actually in Deuteronomy 32:11 where he speaks of an eagle that stirs up its nest that flutters over its young. We've all seen a mother bird that is hovering over her chicks to protect them or to keep them in the nest. And this is what the Spirit of God is doing over the face of the primeval ocean. We're already learning just at this point of the narrative.

Much about how the God of the Bible is different than the other pagan versions of God. For example, we learned that God, even so far, we already learned that God cannot be the God of the Gnostic. The Gnostics believed that it would be beneath God to create the material universe, that would be beneath him to create something physical and material. But in Genesis 1:1, it tells us that God created the heavens and the earth with all the material stuff of earth.

He created the material cosmos. We also can infer from verse two, that God is not the God of the deist, either, who creates and then ignores. God creates the heavens and the earth in verse one, and his spirit is immediately, as one writer says, fluttering like a nurturing bird over the dark in preparation for day one. God's greatness, number 5 is also manifested in this narrative.

Of these verses in the power of His word. Verse 3, then God said, Let there be light, and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. Notice the pattern here, this is a pattern we're gonna see throughout chapter one.

God said, God spoke, we see this 10 times in chapter one, and then we see the words and there was or it was so. In reply to what God had said. This is the power of the Word of God. This is the power of God's Word.

God speaks. And when God speaks, his words are not simply true in the sense that they conform to reality. His words create reality. His words bring things into existence that did not exist before.

When God speaks, reality rearranges itself to match what he says. That's the power of God's word. In this verse, we see that God says, let there be light. And there was light, that's astounding power.

Any God with such power to do such things through his spoken word is a God whose word We should care very much about and tremble before. And the fact that such a God would speak mercy to us is an astounding thing for which we should be eternally grateful. God said, let there be light, and there was light. He spoke and reality changed.

This fact about God and His power, the power of His word is most relevant to the Jews who are standing on the banks of the Jordan River, about to go into the promised land with all the obstacles that are in front of them. Many of them are probably wondering how will we get across this water? How will we conquer the Canaanites? How will we get past their massive and high walls?

Will we be victorious? If so, how will we be victorious? Yes, we know that God has told us to do this. And he told us that he has given us the land, and he has told us that we will be victorious, but how reliable is his word?

And Moses says, let me tell you a story. In the beginning, God said, let there be light. And there was light. You can take God's word to the bank and count on it to be utterly true.

And utterly powerful. God's word, as I said a moment ago, does not merely conform to reality. His word is reality. When God speaks, reality changes itself to match his word.

And this is the God who has spoken to us in His word. This is the God who spoke to the Jews and said, I have given you this land, go in and take it, and I will be with you, and you will succeed. Actually watching God speak light into existence here in the Genesis account should create a sweet stirring inside of us. We should smile when we read the words and God said, let there be light.

And there was light. We should think about how God has spoken light into existence in our very own hearts. In 2 Corinthians 4:4, Paul speaks of the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, and Paul then goes on to say, I believe in verse 6, for God who said light shall shine out of darkness, he says, the God I'm talking about who's done a work in your life, it's the God who in Genesis 1 said, let there be light. And the same God who said light shall shine out of darkness, is the one who has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

Paul is telling us that what is happening here on day one of creation serves as a picture of what God has actually done. To us who have come to His Son by faith. Paul is telling us that God has basically looked upon our darkened hearts when our hearts were tohu wabohu, and God said, let there be light, and there was light in our previously darkened hearts. And that light is the knowledge of God's glory in the face of Christ, it is the good news of the gospel.

It is Relationship with the glorious Lord Jesus Christ. And one day for all of us that know the Lord, there was a day when God visited us in mercy and he said, let there be light. And the gospel came and we saw it. Turns out God is doing.

In the hearts of men and women to this day, the very things he was doing. To our darkened planet in Genesis 1. If you're here today and that your heart is darkened with ignorance and with sin, you should read Genesis 1 verse 3 and say, this is the one I need. This is the God that I need.

I need him to look upon my darkened heart. And say, let there be light. I want to come to this God and say, God, my heart. Is Tohu wabohu command that there be light.

In me What other God is there who can do this for you? This is the God to come to. This is the God who's working in our hearts and in our lives for those of us who know Him. Look at this, the text goes on to say that God saw that the light was good.

God said, let there be light, there was light. He then looked at what he had just created, and he says, this is, this is good. This is good. God created, he then looked upon, expecting to be delighted by what he saw.

And he pronounces it good. There have been times in my life where I have done certain things and I did not want to look at what I had done. Sometimes when I set out to do something, I don't always create something beautiful. There are many things that I've done in my life that I would rather not look at.

There are things I've done in my life that I look upon afterwards and say this was not good. But God is not like this. He says, let there be light and then looks upon the light that he created, expecting to be delighted by it and he pronounces it good. This is our God.

It took Thomas Edison over 1000 tries to get his invention right of the light bulb. He tried and then looked over 1000 times at what he had made, and over 1000 times he said this is not good. But he never quit and he finally got it right, and we are all the beneficiaries of his perseverance. But here in Genesis 1:4, God says, let there be light.

There was light. God looks upon it and observes that it is good. He nailed it. He got it right the first time.

This is our God. The text tells us that God saw that the light was good. In other words, it was beautiful. It was, he was perfectly pleased with what he had just created.

It delighted him immensely. It was exactly what he wanted. And it would be perfectly serviceable to him in the days of creation to come. God spoke light into existence, and it came into existence.

He looked upon it and saw that it was good. We're gonna see this pattern, I think like 7 times in chapter 1. Everything God does is good. Everything.

And we see this even in Genesis 1. There's a 6th and final manifestation of the greatness of God in Genesis 1, and that is his greatness is manifested in his authority over light and darkness. His greatness is manifested in his authority over light and darkness. It says and God separated the light from the darkness.

And God called the light day. In the darkness, he called night, and there was evening and there was morning one day. The text tells us that God separated the light from the darkness. What I think this means is that from the vantage point of Earth, God set it up at this moment of creation to where there would be a time period of light, and there would be a time period of darkness.

This is perhaps the point. Where God is shaping the earth into a sphere and setting it spinning on its axis. This seems reasonable to infer because the text then tells us that he called the light day and the darkness he called night. God has clearly at this point set the Earth on its axis and has put it In the form of a globe that can now rotate on its axis, creating a period.

Of day and night, every spot on earth will experience a day and a night. As we look at this verse, we see God's authority over light and darkness demonstrated in three ways. First of all, he created the light, so he owns it. Secondly, he separated the light from the darkness, this act of distinguishing, separating is an act of authority.

And thirdly, God gave names to the light and to the darkness. He called the light day and the darkness he called the night. What he's doing is giving the light and the darkness names from the vantage point of Earth as the Earth spins on its axis, the time of a 24 hour period where the Earth is facing this light is called day. And the time of day when that same part of the earth is facing away from the light is called night.

This act of naming the day and the night is an assertion, an act of authority. You don't name something that you don't have authority over. By his act of creation, separating and naming, God is demonstrating that he is the Lord over the light, and over the darkness. He is Lord over the day, he is Lord over the night.

This means that he is the Lord over your days and your nights. Day and night are his creation. Day and night are his intellectual property that we get to benefit from and live inside of in a 24 hour period. And because these days and nights are his creation and his intellectual property, he gets to make the rules for how we behave ourselves in the days and the nights that he allows us to live inside of.

We should note here that the sun has not been created at this point of creation, that's not a problem at all. It's one of the intriguing facts of scripture that the Bible begins with light, without the sun. And it ends with light, without a sun. In Revelation 22:5, John is describing the new Jerusalem, and he, and he says, their night will be no more.

They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light. If you have a problem with a light source in Genesis 1, apart from the sun, then you're gonna have a problem with heaven too. But whatever this light is that God speaks into existence, that he's creating here, it's the object from which the sun and the trillions of stars will eventually get their light. The sun and the stars will be made from the stuff of this light.

that God has created on this first day. Verse 5 closes with these words, and there was evening, and there was morning one day. This actually makes perfect sense. Evening refers to the end of the light part of the day, and morning refers to the end of the night part of the day.

So another way of saying this is, and there was dusk. And there was daybreak. The first day Again, this should make sense to us. God did his creative work on day one, he created the heavens and the earth, created the light, he separated the light from the darkness, and then after that, the next thing to arrive, as the earth turned on its axis is evening.

That would end the light part of the day and then morning would come and at the very second that morning broke, the first workday was over and the 2nd workday began. As one writer says, the 1st day ends when the darkness of the evening is dispelled by the morning light. Let me just close our time together, with this, we look at Genesis 1:1 through 5, we see the greatness of God in these verses, as we continue to unpack this chapter in the book of Genesis, we're gonna see God's greatness on bold and vivid display.

And you really do, as you read these verses and study them, you need to be inferring things about God.

This week, Pope Francis talked about the very passage that we're studying in Genesis one, and he gives this caution. When we read about creation in Genesis, we run the risk of imagining God was a magician with a magic wand able to do everything. But that is not so. Well, a straight reading of Genesis one creates no such risk for us.

We don't see a magician God with a magic wand in these verses. The God of Genesis one doesn't need no wand. And he's better than a magician. He merely speaks the words, and reality changes itself to conform to the words of God.

He is a God who can, who is able to do everything. That is the vision of God that we see in Genesis one. So if you believed in Jesus, listen. The God of Genesis is your God.

In fact, John 1:1 tells us that Jesus is actually the one who's acting here and creating all that is being created. He's the one speaking and creating in Genesis one. This is the creative and transforming power of the Lord Jesus Christ, to take a shapeless and empty and uninhabitable, darkened planet with raging waters, and make it Into the pristine glorious paradise that it will become in 6 days. Imagine what Christ can do with you.

If you will believe in Him, if you're a believer in Him, be encouraged with what this Christ is doing in you. Let yourself be blown away by the greatness of a God who can create like this. Don't let yourself think small thoughts about God. Your God is not little, he's huge and he's powerful.

He can create from nothing, he can create light, where there is darkness, he can give shape to what is shapeless, he can make habitable what is inhabitable. He can separate light from darkness and he can separate you from your sin. And his spirit can hover over a raging primeval ocean. And tame it to suit his purposes, and he can do the same in you and in me.

This is our God. Let us worship and let us praise Him. And adore him every moment. Of every day.

Let's pray together. Lord, we, we are so privileged. You didn't have to reveal this to us. But we are so privileged that we have the Book of Genesis and we are allowed a front row seat just to come and sit and watch you create all that is.

We're so blessed and you are so mighty and so awesome. Forgive us for ever thinking small thoughts of you. Expand our minds and our hearts to where we think of you as we ought to think. And if we really know you as we ought, Lord, we will stand firm, we will be encouraged, and we will do great things in your name, as it says in Daniel, those who know their God will stand firm and do great exploits.

And Genesis provides us a chance. To know our God in a way like we've never known Him before. Thank you for this revelation as we continue working through these verses in the weeks to come. Give us eyes to see and ears to hear all that you have for us.

We thank you Lord for this opportunity to give of our offerings to you, receive these funds and do much with every penny that is given for the glory of Jesus, in whose name we pray, and all God's people said. Amen.