Jeffrey Heine: If you have a Bible, open to Genesis. Genesis chapter 1. If you're new to church, or unfamiliar with your Bible, this is an easy one. It's the very first book. It's the very first verse.
Genesis chapter 1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, And darkness was over the face of the deep. And the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, let there be light and there was light.
And God saw that the light was good and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day. The darkness, he called night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day. This is the word of the Lord.
Amen. Pray with me. Our Father, we humbly submit to you and to your word. And place ourselves underneath its authority, and we ask that you would speak through the power of your spirit. Write these things on our hearts and our minds, and may they profoundly change us.
Lord, my words my words can only bring death, but Your words bring life, and we need life. So I pray that my words would fall to the ground and that they would blow away and they would not be remembered anymore. But Lord, may Your words remain and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.
So I've been studying Genesis chapter 1 for a while, actually for about the last 3 years. I've been kinda deep diving into this. I've read about 15,000 pages on Genesis chapter 1. I I don't say that to impress you. You could've gotten the same knowledge probably in 500 pages.
It takes me a lot longer, to absorb these things. But even reading so much about this, I realized I was just scratching the surface. And what we're gonna be doing, today is we're gonna be just skimming, just lightly scratching the surface of Genesis chapter 1. I actually had not intended years ago to read as much as I did about genesis 1, but what I found was I kept getting drawn into just the majesty and the wonder of God. And it kept drawing me into worship.
And this really is my goal for our series going through Genesis, is that we would celebrate who the Lord God is as our Creator and our Lord. In a much deeper and fuller way. And so I'm excited about this series. Just in the next few weeks, we're gonna be looking at some pretty important stuff. We're gonna be looking at what does it mean to be human?
What does it mean to be a human created in the image of God? What does it mean to be created male and female? What does temptation look like? What's wrong with this world? Has it always been this way, and will it always be this way?
And we'll look at things like Noah, and the flood, and the tower of Babel. We've got some good stuff ahead of us. But but first, we really need to talk about the important things like, what happened to the dinosaurs? And we need to talk about Old Earth verse young earth, or is this an were are we the product of a instant creation or evolution? What about the big bang?
And and while you're at it, where did that city that Lot ran to, how did it get there? You know, in Genesis 4, or who are those Nephilim in Genesis 6? And what does it mean when the sons of God came down and mated with the daughters of men? And did Adam have a belly button? I mean, there's like there's some pressing pressing questions that we have when we are coming to Genesis.
But perhaps, the best question that we can ask is what are the questions we are supposed to ask? And what exactly is Genesis trying to answer? I heard the story of a 4 year old boy who went to his mom and asked her, mom, where did I come from? And the mom was like, Oh, why couldn't your daddy be home? You know, and she says a quick prayer and then she she dives in and she goes, son, well, you see when a man loves a woman, scrap that.
You know how bumblebees are always flying around the flowers and, let's go back to the man and the woman. Alright. You know, there's there's there's physical differences between a man and a woman, and she's sweating profusely, and she does the best she can over, like, 10 or 15 minutes. And she finally finishes and she said, son, did that make any sense to you? He goes, not at all.
Jimmy says, he came from Indiana, and then he runs off. And I feel like we we approach Genesis this way. We we we come to Genesis with all of these questions, but there's a disconnect between I need to know the age of the earth, or I need a scientific explanation for how the universe came into being, you are going to walk away frustrated. Because Genesis is not interested in answering those questions for you. So don't force them on Genesis.
Genesis is not so much about the how. There are it's gonna address some of the how, but its primary focus is on the who and the why. And so, before we jump into the text itself, I feel like I need to address just a couple of hiccups, that a lot of people have when they're reading through Genesis. A lot of people stumble right out of the gate when they're reading Genesis, especially Genesis chapter 1 because they make a couple of mistakes. The first mistake that people make is they try to read Genesis 1 like a scientific journal.
And the second, mistake that people make when reading Genesis 1 is that, they have too narrow of a definition of what it means to create. We need to have a broader definition. So let's look at both of these. Genesis chapter 1 is not to be read as a scientific journal. If you've ever read through Genesis chapter 1 and Genesis 2, you'll realize that both of those chapters are about creation.
They're both creation accounts, but they differ dramatically from one another. And this is because they are written in 2 different styles or 2 different genres. Same author, Moses is writing them both, but he writes them in 2 very different ways. Genesis 2, which we'll look at in a couple of weeks, it's written in what we call narrative prose, which is what most of the Bible is written in. And this is the genre you you use when you're describing something.
When you're documenting something. Genesis 1, however, is poetical. There's an obvious structure and a rhythm to it and it's beautiful. Every day begins with God saying, let there be, and then something springs into being and then it ends with him saying this was good and he says, and there was evening and there was morning the first day. And then he says, let there be and more things are created.
And he says, and then there was evening and there was morning the second day. There's this beautiful rhythm and cadence to it. It's poetical. Now this does not in any way let me be clear in this. This does not in any way mean that it is not factual and it is not true because it absolutely is.
But like all good poetry, it's written in such a way in which it's gonna boldly highlight certain truths in order to celebrate them. Its goal is not to scientifically document them. So Genesis 1 is a celebration. Genesis 2, written in narrative prose, is more of a documentation or a description. This is a pattern that we actually find throughout the bible.
Description and celebration. For instance, if you go to the next book in the bible, Exodus, and you go to chapter 14, you're gonna find Moses writing about the parting of the Red Sea and how God parted the Red Sea and that God's people walked through on dry land and you have that described. And then you come to Exodus chapter 15 and it's poetical. It's a song And it was written in order to celebrate those truths that you just heard in Exodus 14. And so you have all of the celebratory poetic language like, the Lord has thrown the horse and rider into the sea.
And at the blast of God's nostrils, the water is piled up. Now if you wanna understand the science of how God uses his nostrils in order to blow in such a way to get the air, you know, to move the the waters, to get them to pile up, you will miss the entire point of Exodus 15. It's a celebration of what he has done in Exodus 14. Do not miss the point of Genesis 1. If you go to it just looking for scientific explanations, you will be frustrated.
The goal is to lead us into a celebration of our creator. So let me just say at the start here that I know many godly godly scholars who believe in a literal 6 day creation with 24 hour periods, and I know many godly scholars who do not believe that, but believe that the universe was created over 13,700,000,000 years. I know many godly scholars who believe in an instant creation and many godly scholars who would also believe in evolution. And we need to be really gracious with one another and careful before we hold up one and say this is the biblical view. Because once again, Genesis 1 is not interested in so much in describing the how.
It's wanting you to know the who and the why. Any of you, James Spann fans out there? Alright, James Spann? Like really, like you you follow James Spann? Okay.
Most of you, you know who he is. He comes out every tornado watch, He's out there. He's got the the red suspenders. He he lives for this moment. He's a Christian.
It's kinda like you know, Chick Fil A's Christian food. James Spann's your Christian meteorologist. Right? It's who we all go to. And so we we love James Spann, and he gives us the weather.
Now James Spann 100% believes the Bible is true, and that God is the one who causes it to rain. God is the one who withholds the rain. He 100% holds to that. Yet when he is making his weather forecast, he's not getting down on his knees and trying to hear from the Lord, and then saying the next day, there's a I was 60% certain I heard from the Lord that there's gonna be rain or slightly clouds, you know. He he doesn't do it.
He's looking at the barometric pressure. He's looking at the wind currents. He's looking at all of these other things to explain the how. So he looks at all these other things to explain the how, but then he 100% holds up the who and the why. God is the one who causes it to rain or to stop.
Now now most of us don't have any problem with that. Any at all because it's meteorology. But somehow when it comes to the origins of the universe or it comes to our own origins, we get a little touchy and I understand that. But once again, I want us to be gracious with one another and also to be faithful to ask the right questions of Genesis 1. So that's our first stumbling block.
We treat it as a scientific journal, and it's not. It's a celebration. Second is this, we have too narrow of a definition of what it means to create. You see, when you read through Genesis 1, you hear this word create. And you immediately think of something.
Everybody living in the 21st century immediately thinks of a material creation. That it is physical matter that is springing into existence. Something is created when it has physical properties. But hear me, this is not at all how people understood the word creation in Moses' day or in the ancient near east. It was not primarily about just physical property.
That was a minor part of it. It was mostly about purpose and function. Something was only truly created when it had a purpose. When you gave it meaning. So of course, it had to be physically the physical properties had to come into existence, but that alone didn't create it.
It had to be given a purpose. So a good way to think of this for us is to think about a restaurant. If I were to ask you the question, when is a restaurant created? Well, you have to think about that. And you think, well, is it is it created when the building is made?
When there's bricks and mortar? Or is a restaurant created when the chef and the staff are hired? Or is a restaurant created when the first meals are cooked? Or is a restaurant created when the first customers come and and pay for the food? When exactly is the restaurant created?
And he realized it's not as easy to answer as you first thought. It's certainly much more than just the physical building itself. People, purpose, function, all need to be operating together in order for you to say, now it's created. And Genesis is no different. The creation that we see described here needs both the physical properties and it needs the function.
And if you only focus on the material the material aspect of creation, you are going to miss the entire point. Because Genesis is primarily concerned with the purpose. God is ordering these physical elements around and he's giving everything an explicit purpose. It only matters it it it it's only after matter exist and then is given a function do we call it created. So as you read through Genesis 1, nothing that God materially creates in Genesis 1, is created just to exist.
Now you have the sun that's created not just to exist, but it has a purpose in order to give us day, in order to give us night. Now you find this all throughout Genesis 1, the function and the purpose of his creation being explained. As a matter of fact, you you seem to have in verse 1, God creates all the matter. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. It's all this matter, and it's chaotic.
It's formless. And it's void. And it's darkness. And then, what you seem to have over the rest of the days is God is orchestrating these things. He's moving things around.
He's fashioning all of this matter in such a way to give it a function, to give it a purpose. He begins fine tuning all of it according to His design in order that we might flourish. Can I tell you His design is absolutely astounding? If you do not believe in God, if you're a skeptic, then you really do have some explaining to do as you look at our universe and its design. Because it seems like everything, not just in our world, but in the universe has been fine tuned for our existence.
Take liquid water, for example. We live in a world that is full of liquid water. But do you have any idea how rare that is in the universe? It's one of the rarest commodities we have in the entire universe. A matter of fact, if you were taking an inventory of the universe, liquid water would not even make the list.
No more than if you were taking an inventory of your house, that penny in between the sofa cushions would make the list. It's that rare. And yet, here on earth, we have oceans full of it. We have children jumping into pools with it, playing in sprinklers. We could turn on any faucet and there it is.
It literally falls from the sky on us. This rarest of commodities, and, of course, life could not exist without it. Pick up any good, you know, 8th, 9th grade physical science textbook. And you'll read about these things. You're gonna read about how we actually got this water.
And it'll talk about the the earth got this water. The the water we have. It was originally forged in the furnace of some star that went supernova, out there in the suburbs of the Milky Way galaxy. And and when it exploded, you know, it's sending out oxygen, hydrogen, helium. It's it's sending all those elements out everywhere to a debris field that's more than a 1,000,000,000,000 miles wide.
But then over the course of 1,000,000,000 of years, they begin to pull together through this force called gravity. They begin to gather all of these elements together, and then you get the hydrogen. It it starts joining up with the oxygen, and it starts forming this thing called water. And then it gets pulled in to this new, massive rock that's being formed. And it gets pulled in there.
And that rock is just the right temperature to where that water can remain liquid. It's it's awe inspiring as as you read through this. And and what I want you to do is you can hold that up. You can hold that up and then you can read Genesis. And God said, let the waters of heaven be gathered together in one place.
When I hold up all of that that I've read there and then I read Genesis 1 and how this gathering together happens, I literally wanna weep in worship. How glorious and mighty our God is. Can I geek out for just a minute on y'all? Y'all have time for me to geek out? My my kids, they're they're alright.
They're done with this. Like, they are so done with me like every dinner table going through this. But let's take a look at gravity. Alright. Did you know that if gravity was just a hair weaker, like 1 billionth of a gram weaker, the particles would not have been forming together.
We would have no stars, we would have no galaxies. Yet if gravity was 1 billionth of a gram heavier, well then we would have too much ammonia, too much methane and that our earth could not attain water. If we were too close in the middle, it'd have too much radiation and we could never exist. And our sun, well our sun is the it is unlike the vast majority of the stars that are that are out there. Our sun puts out a remarkably stable output of energy that happens to be the exact amount of energy that our earth needs.
And it's also the perfect size. If it was any larger, there would be too much radiation. If it was any smaller, well then we couldn't have photosynthesis. There'd be no life. And our earth happens to be the perfect distance from the sun.
Any closer, we would burn off all of the water. Any further away, well, we would freeze. And our orbit needs to be perfectly circular or nearly perfectly circular. Otherwise, there would be too much fluctuation in our temperature and we would not have a stable climate. And thank goodness we have a moon that's the perfect size we need also in a near perfect circular orbit around us.
And it provides the stabilization that our orbit needs, allowing our climate to be steady. I could go on about this and I read things like this about how the moon and the sun, they're perfectly positioned. And I hold all of that up. Hold that all of it up over here. And then I read through Genesis 1.
And God made the 2 great lights. The greater to rule the day and the lesser to rule the night and the stars, And God set them in the expanse of the heavens. And I hold all that together and I see how God has set them beautifully, perfectly in the expanse of the heavens. And I want to celebrate and worship. I could talk more.
I'm going to. I'm not gonna look at my kids. They're like, dad, stop. You know, our earth, we have a we needed a super heated core. But it it needed to be a solid core.
Thankfully, we have enough gravity that although the core of our earth is the temperature of sun, it remains in a solid state because of all the gravity. But then, we also need a molten outer core to be spinning around that. But it's not spinning around the the speed we need, but thankfully, that combined with the earth's rotation speeds it up just enough where it provides an electromagnetic field the perfect strength we need to ward off the sun's radiation. Perfect. If the Earth's gravity, if it's axial, if it's rotation period, if it's magnetic field, if it's crust thickness, if it's oxygen to nitrogen ratio, if it's core temperature, if it's water vapor were off by even the slightest of slightest margins, life could not exist.
It is staggering odds and I haven't even begun to tell you the greatest odds. The odds are so staggering that even the most staunch atheist, even people like, you know, Stephen Hawking or Richard Dawkins, they'll at least acknowledge it certainly seems as if the universe has been designed for a purpose. And what we see here is it has. It absolutely has been designed for a purpose. And we are to celebrate that design and that purpose.
And we are to worship our creator. And Genesis 1 is our song. And so let's dig in and just look at just a few things. We don't have much time. I just wanna look in a few things in Genesis 1.
Once again, verse 1. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. This has been called the most pregnant verse in all of the bible, which is true because literally everything flows out of it. And what we see here is that at the beginning, before there was anything, before there was any physics, laws of gravity, before there was time, before there was space, before there was anything, there was God. This is the foundational truth of everything we know is before anything there was God.
The universe did not just spring into existence from nothing. God was already there and he was creating it all. And the implications of this are profound. This means that everything has a purpose, that everything has meaning, that your lives have purpose and meaning. You are not just a result of the accidental collision of atoms coming together that somehow spontaneously came into being.
You were created. You have a purpose. I shared this a couple of years ago, but I met with a doctorate at UAB. She wanted said she had some questions so we met back there in the welcome room. And I'm sitting down with her and the first thing she says, she goes, I want you to know, I am not like those other weak Chinese women who come to the United States and become Christians.
It's like, strong opening statement. Like and so I said, okay. So how do you cope with the meaninglessness of your existence? To her credit, she said, I guess that's why I'm here, not well. She said, I have to grant as a scientist that if I do not believe in God, that my life has no meaning.
She's absolutely right. The only way we have any meaning is if we actually recognize that we were created, that we were designed for something. That our lives actually have a purpose. You can't have a purpose unless you were created. That you also would not have a right or a wrong.
There would be no such thing as good or bad. You know, some of you can remember in your philosophy classes that you took about, you know, moral relativism and your professors spouting out, you know, there really is no such thing as good or bad. It's all culturally relevant. And of course, nobody believes that. That only can exist in in the classroom.
But the moment you leave that and you see genocide, every person in the world goes, that's wrong. They're like, I just made a moral judgment. It is wrong. That's written in the DNA of every heart that we know that there are certain things that are right and certain things that are wrong. But the only way we know anything is right or wrong or good or bad is if we recognize we have a design.
We have a purpose. And if we're going with our design, a purpose is good. If we're going against it, it is wrong. And so we see that in the very first verse of the Bible. Let's read on.
The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, let there be light, and there was light. At the time this was written, there was many creation myths that were all around the Israelites, all around the ancient near east. And if you go through them, all of them talk about creation happening through great acts of violence. Usually, some gods were fighting and one god slays another god and somehow out of the carcass of that one god, the cosmos springs forward.
These were the stories that the Israelites were steeped in. This is this is the kind of world they knew and now God through his servant Moses comes up to them and he says, no. You've got it all wrong. There's not many gods. There is one God.
And he created everything. Not through an act of violence, but he spoke it into existence out of an act of love. This is utterly different than anything else the world had ever heard. That God speaks creation into existence out of an incredible act of love. I love the language that we read there.
And the spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. That that word is beautiful. Hovering, literally, it means it's it's the language you would use to describe a mother eagle fluttering its wings over its young as it approaches the nest. And what you say, it's a very tender word and and you have the spirit of God, he's he's fluttering his wings. He's hovering over these dark chaotic waters.
Did y'all hear that in Hillary's testimony? What she talked about? All her life she saw, she could look back and she see that God was hovering there. Hovering over the dark chaotic waters of her life, And then, he speaks light into it and the darkness is shattered. The chaos is gone.
What we see here happening in these these first verses of creation is something we will see happening over and over again throughout all of the pages of the bible. When you come to Exodus and you come to the plagues that are happening all over Egypt, what it is is those who held to God's word, well there was life and there was beauty. Those who rejected God's words, their life fell into utter chaos and death. But God speaks over those dark chaotic waters, and He brings order, and He brings life. And every Christian has experienced this personally, in which God's word has come to you, and it has shattered the darkness and the chaos in your life, and has given you life and light.
I love the gospel of John and what the apostle John says in this. It's there in your worship guide. John is obviously thinking very deeply about Jesus and he's thinking very deeply about Genesis 1. And he interprets the poem for you if you will. He tells you the meaning of it.
So we read in John 1. He says, in the beginning was the Word. So right off there, that in beginning he's taking you right back to Genesis. Exact same introduction. In the beginning, and he says, was the word.
Well we just heard the word. That's when God says, let there be light and there was light. So that's what he's hearking back to. In the beginning was the word. But now he tells you what that word is.
That word was with God and the word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.
In verse 14, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory. Glory as of the only son from the father, full of grace and truth. The apostle John now tells us that word that we see there, that word is Jesus. Jesus is the one who's their creation. Jesus is the one who is taking the dark chaotic waters, and he is turning them into life and light.
And that is something that Jesus continues to do. Though some of you have experienced that personally, that Jesus, you have heard him call and he has spoken to you and he has shattered that darkness and brought life. And some of you need to listen to Jesus as he is calling to you. Just as Hillary pleaded, I plead with you. Do not put off that word.
Listen to him fluttering over you, speaking words of life. I am so excited about this series in Genesis because what I see just as in the very first page, it is ultimately about Jesus. What we will see is over and over in every page, it's about Jesus. Every page is about the gospel that we believe. And I'm so hopeful and thankful that the time we have, God is gonna lead us into a deeper celebration of Him.
Pray with me. Lord, we thank you that your word went to us, dispel the darkness and has brought in light. We thank you that we are created. We are not an accident. We are thankful that you've given us a purpose.
Lord, and I can't wait to dive into what our purpose is over the next few weeks. So spirit of God, we ask that you would be with us. Help us to live the way that you would have us to live. We love you, Jesus, and we pray this in your name. Amen.