The Beginning

My text for today is from the first verses of Genesis chapter one: “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.”

We are starting a series centering around Genesis – the first book of Moses. It will not be my purpose to demonstrate the Mosaic authorship of Genesis, or any of the other four books that are are attributed to him by the best and most conservative Bible scholars.

Let me only say this: You will find plenty of anti-supernaturalist so-called ‘scholars’ who will tell you Moses didn’t write the Torah – the five books of Moses. And, of course, Liberal/anti-supernatural false teachers do the same thing with other Old and New Testament books such as Isaiah, Daniel, Acts, and so forth. I will, however, only refer to the words of Jesus Himself, who clearly believed in the Mosaic origin of the Pentateuch. For example: MT 19:7, quoting from DT 24:1-4; MT 22:24 quoting from DT 25:5; Mark 1:44 citing Leviticus 14:1-32; Mark 7: 9-11 citing Exodus 20:12 and Leviticus 20:9; Luke 24:44 citing the Pentateuch in general as the books of Moses.

You can look up those passages on your own.  But at the outset of this series, I will make it as clear as I know how: Since Jesus accepted the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, I will do the same in our series in Genesis.

One of the first questions people often ask is, how Moses knew of the details of Creation, as well as, for example, the Flood, the Tower of Babel, and the histories of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and so forth? But we could also ask the same question about the future prophecies spoken by the prophets throughout the Old Testament. How did THEY know the future? We could also ask that question about the future prophecies of the Lord Jesus and His apostles such as those of Paul and Peter (e.g. Matthew 24; 1 and 2 Peter; 1 and 2 Thessalonians).

Answer? Certainly, the stories in Genesis – not only of the creation days but of events such as the Tower of Babel, the global flood, and the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and the Twelve Tribes, these stories were passed from generation to generation. However, Christians – and the Jews before us – believed that the work of the same Creator who created the universe and everything in it simply by speaking – this same Creator just as easily supernaturally ensured that the stories handed down and eventually compiled by Moses would be the truth and nothing but the truth.

It's called ‘supernatural’ for a reason. And it is at THIS point that our faith either fails to keep us persevering for Christ through persecutions and disappointments, or it is at this point of believing in the supernatural God that our faith moves us toward maturity in Christ. If God, by His Holy Spirit, did not or could not ensure His truth to come to us undiluted, then were does Truth really begin and where does it really end?

And who is elected to determine truth? You? Me? Your pastor? Some theologians with two PhDs after their names? Or is Truth determined by what God's word says it is AND how that truth has been understood and preserved for us by those early Christian councils – from the Jerusalem council in Acts 15 and through those in the first few centuries of the Church as they fought against a multiplicity of heresies such as Judaism stuck in the Law of Moses, or the heresies of Arianism or Marcionism.

At the outset of our Genesis series this really IS an important question we each must answer for ourselves. Satan has, throughout the millennia since God created the heavens and the earth, Satan has and will continue his attempts to pull us from the true center of Biblical faith. The ancient heresies I just mentioned are still alive and well in the 21st century. For example, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons, and Muslims are theological the children of the early heretic Arius who believed Jesus was a created being.

And you may have read so-called ‘Christian’ books or sat under pastors who promote – wittingly or unwittingly – the fifth century heresy of Pelagianism that taught that humanity is ‘fundamentally good.” Pelagius taught his followers that we are all born pure. In other words, we don’t sin because we are sinners, but we are sinners because we sin.

This is a very important distinction, and we will look at that point in closer detail when we get to chapter three of Genesis and the introduction of sin into God's creation.  But for now, I will tell you what God's truth tells: We sin BECAUSE we are sinners. THAT is why – because we are BORN sinners – that God saw it necessary to send His Son to die in our place as our substitutionary sacrifice for OUR sins.

This question about whether we will follow the truths of Scripture or philosophies and theologies that drift from Scriptural truth is not dissimilar to the question Jesus asked the theologians of His day. For example, they asked Jesus: (Mark 11:30-33) “Was the baptism of John from heaven, or from men? Answer Me.” [And] “They began reasoning among themselves, saying, “If we say, ‘From heaven,’ He will say, ‘Then why did you not believe him?’ But shall we say, ‘From men’?”—they were afraid of the people, for everyone considered John to have been a real prophet. Answering Jesus, they *said, “We do not know.” And Jesus *said to them, “Nor will I tell you by what authority I do these things.”

What do you think the Lord says to theologians and pastors who today reject the truth that ALL Scripture is inspired by God? I think what the Word-made-Flesh said at a different time to the crowds in Matthew’s gospel might be the answer to that question: (Matthew 13:13-14, 15) “I speak to them in parables; because while seeing they do not see, and while hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand. In their case the prophecy of Isaiah is being fulfilled, which says . . . For the heart of this people has become dull . . . and they have closed their eyes, Otherwise they would see with their eyes, hear with their ears, and understand with their heart and return, and I would heal them.’

If we close our eyes to God's truths because we do not like something He said, or what He said doesn’t make sense to us, then we should not be surprised if He keeps us in the dark about others of His truths.

So, again, back to the text: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. In these ten words – seven in the original Hebrew – we already witness a critically important point necessary for a fruitful walk with God.

In these simple words God tells us the universe and the Earth had a beginning. Before God created the heavens and the earth, nothing existed. Nothing. Not light, or molecules, or even atoms. Nothing existed that now exists. And although it might seem curious that I would spend more than a passing reference to what is clearly obvious to the Christian, I must say a few more words about the creation of all that is seen and unseen because the truths of God's word are being rapidly eroded by false teachers in clerical garb and who have lots of academic letters after their names.

Not many years ago Nancy and I sat in a church here in Johns Creek and listened to the pastor tell us the universe is as eternal as God is eternal. He may or may not have known it, but he was teaching his flock the basic tenet of Pantheism.

Pantheism is a religious belief that teaches the universe is identical to ‘a’ supreme being. Pantheism does NOT recognize a personal god, and so how this pastor even holds his position in a Christian church is simply another evidence of the growing apostasy in so many churches – Protestant and Catholic.

When I sent him an email describing my confusion that he would teach such error from the pulpit, he essentially told me he knew better than I about God. And so I caution everyone: Be very careful around pompous people like that – regardless of their position in the Church. But let’s move on: “In the beginning, God . . . .”

In the original Hebrew text ‘Elohim’ – translated ‘God’ – is the third word in

 the sentence. But the noun for God is plural in Hebrew, and ‘created’ is in the SINGULAR. In other words, the plural for God – Elohim’ – is the first indication that the God who created the heavens and the earth is not a ‘singular entity’ but a ‘plurality entity.’ And we see this many times in Moses and in the rest of the Old Testament, not the least of which is later in chapter one, verses 26 and 27:

“And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth. So, God created man in His own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”

I want us to notice the shift of pronouns: “Let us make man in our own image . .  . . So, God created man in HIS OWN image . . ..” We see something similar in Deuteronomy 6:4 when Moses writes: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God (Elohim) is one Lord.” The Hebrew word Moses uses here for ‘one’ is ‘echad.’ We find ‘echad’ in Genesis 2:24. For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife; and they shall become one (echad) flesh.

The point in all this is that while echad means ‘one,’ according to the context in which it appears, echad is defined as a unit. Thus, Adam and Eve became echad flesh. Now there is another Hebrew word for one – ‘yachid.’ But yachid ALWAYS refers to a strict numerical one, as in one sheep, one grape, one rock). It is NEVER used in the context of God.

So, why is that important? Because the biblical truth of the Triunity of God appears as early as the third word in the Bible and is not an invention by the Church of the first and later centuries. God's word teaches from the third word of Genesis that God is ONE God in three Persons. You would think that should have put to rest the heresies that were yet to be birthed in later that denied the Trinity of God, and which survive to this day in various forms.

The necessity for our belief in the supernatural work of God in implicit in these very few verses of chapter one of Genesis. If we accept the truth of creations supernatural origin, then we will be able to accept His further unveiling of truth – including His truth about Jesus.

Now, let’s move on in the text: “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.”

The words Moses used for formless, and void have several possible meanings, such as chaotic, a wasteland, and emptiness. And so, this is a good time to make application of this text to 2024, even millennia after the earth was formless, chaotic, a wasteland, and when darkness was over the surface of the deep. We can make application because the word-picture is also a metaphor for our life and the lives of so many we know and care about.

Have you ever walked in darkness? Has your life ever been chaotic and void? I don’t think there is a person over the age of fifty today who can honestly answer no to those questions. I certainly will confess how chaotic and wasted my life was before I met Jesus. I can also easily extrapolate how utterly devoid of hope and light my life would be today if I’d continued along that trajectory.

But the beginning has not for me – nor for you here who know and follow the Lord Jesus – our beginning has NOT determined our end. The darkness in which we lived and worked was one day dispelled by the same Spirit who hovered over that original darkness and brought light – stunning, explosive light – to our life-path.

Jesus said to His listeners the same thing He says to you and me today: “I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life.” (John 8:12)

And then in 12:35 – “Walk while you have the Light, so that darkness will not overtake you; he who walks in the darkness does not know where he goes.”

David Strauss (d. 1874) was a leading German anti-supernaturalist who spent a lifetime erasing belief in God from the minds of others. Listen to what he said just before his death: "My philosophy leaves me utterly forlorn! I feel like one caught in the merciless jaws of an automatic machine, not knowing at what time one of its great hammers may crush me!"

And then there is Anton Levey (d. 1997) who authored the Satanic Bible and was the so-called ‘high priest’ of Satanism. His dying words were these: "Oh my, oh my. What have I done? There is something very wrong. There is something very wrong.”

That’s what walking in spiritual darkness does to a person, including those living here at Ashwood Meadows who’ve rejected the light of Christ. It leaves them without even a glimmer of the light of hope.

On the other hand, those who walked and who walk in the light of Christ have a different experience at their death. For example, Elizabeth Catez, known as St. Elizabeth of the Trinity, died at the age of 26. She went to her Lord murmuring a soft chant: “I am going to the light, to love, to life!” They were her last intelligible words.

When pastor John Inskip's lay on his deathbed, he pulled his wife close, took her hands in his and raised them up together. With a countenance radiating joy, he shouted his final words: "Victory! Triumph! Triumph."

What does it mean to walk in the light of Christ? It means to walk as Jesus Himself walked – in obedience to the Father. Listen to these words of our Lord: (John 5:19) “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner.

And then in 6:38 – “For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.”

To walk in Christ’s light is to live a lifestyle that reflects His obedience to His Father. Will we fail to obey at times? Certainly. But that is what confession and repentance are all about – confessing to God our sin, turning from that sin, and asking for His forgiveness through and by the sacrificial atonement of Christ Jesus.

Long after Moses wrote these words on which we’ve been focusing our attention during this message, Isaiah wrote these words which remain applicable to all of us (Isaiah 9:2): “The people who walk in darkness will see a great light; Those who live in a dark land the light will shine on them.”

And so I must close today’s message, and I will do it in this way: The whole of Scripture, from these first words in Genesis to the final words in the Revelation – the whole of Scripture has one overarching theme, and that is God the Father sent God the Son to be our atonement, the Light of life who, by God the Holy Spirit, will rescue all who WANT to be rescued the chaos and the darkness that has infected our world and inexorably destroying it.

Jesus is the ONLY light to bring us out of darkness. I urge you have already come to His light, then I urge you to keep coming again and again, lest we drift slowly back into darkness. And if you have never before come to His light, then I urge you once again – come. Now. He is only a prayer away.

We will return to Genesis chapter one next week.