God's Plan for the Ages 01 God's Plan — Lawrence Chambers

Put up a little ahead of time. I'd like to draw your attention to the first chapter of Genesis and the first verse. Genesis 1, 1. Let us remember that we are just beginning to read the first word of the Bible.

Genesis 1:1 as God's First Word to Humanity

Not only is it the first chapter of Genesis, but it's the first breathing of the voice of deity to his human family. We like to look at the introductory remarks to our letters from loved ones and the family.

Maybe especially if they're at a distance, every word is devoured. Here we find God writing his letter to us. And he says, in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Now we've read that so often, that as we've been saying on Sunday, the dignity and glory and beauty of the simplicity of the profound statements and the profound consequences just do not seem to flicker before our minds anymore.

But just think, the divine majesty and greatness of all that God has put into being, he has made it out of nothing. They had to create a word in the Hebrew language, no less than the Hebrew, most expressive language, I suppose, in existence.

And yet they had to create the word bara, to indicate making something out of absolutely nothing. And that, of course, only deity could do. And so we think of it again, in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

That is all we are told of the origin of all created things, that's all. God maintains this attitude towards man, that he's giving us a book of instruction, not a book of information. Lots of things that we're informed by it, of course.

But nevertheless we do not come to it for information merely, to satisfy intellectualism. We come to it to be told. We come to it in a subordinated manner, in an attitude of submission to divine authority, who has put us into this world as his subject, his creatures, the creatures of his creatorial hand.

And he has the right to tell us, like our fathers and mothers in our homes have the right to tell us what they want, and not to satisfy mere curiosity. And so we find here there's no date given for the original creation.

Therefore, there's plenty of room for the geologists' millions of years, as they might claim. Although they vary terrifically from one end of the numbers to the other, as to how many million years the earth has been in existence.

They try, to many of them at least, ungodly scientists, they're not all that way, but they try, because of the antiquity of the earth, to prove that the bible couldn't be true, because it's got 4004 or some such limited number at the top of the page.

But that does not in any measure control verse one of our first chapter of Genesis. And so there's no date, and there's no detail. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, period. And then he goes on to something at a greater, greater distance than we know anything about, to tell us what's next.

No detail. And there's no details as to method. No details as to its appearance, as to what inhabitants that first creation, in its pristine beauty, had within its borders. And so scarcity isn't to be brought into the thing at all.

But we do know, of course, that the spade has dug up all kinds of evidences of enormous, monstrous beings, creatures, of animal character, that lived before Adam and Eve's time. And we are grateful that such a thing happened before man ever entered.

I don't know how a man would have ever lived under the condition that these great skeletons that they have dug up would indicate. Nevertheless, we find that God exists by this statement. In the beginning, God.

Creation, Atheism, and God's Distinction from the Material World

That does away with any atheism. Theism is the science of God. Atheism is the belief that there is no God. It's just like the word muse, meaning to think. And amuse means not to think. The A in front just brings in a negation to the whole idea as to the original word.

And so an atheist is one who doesn't believe there is such a person as God. But you know, it's going to be a terrific shock to them to find out that they are wrong someday. And they will not be able then to make any difference about it.

They can't change their position. They can't alter their decision. Because when they do discover his person and his judgment, it's going to be an awful discovery for them. And so God is seen as existing distinct from the material world in which he, or the material creation which he had put into existence.

Now there are a lot of people, they call themselves materialists. And they believe that material was, always was. And they believe that material developed from one thing to another by changes. And by the Earth's convolutions and revolutions and so on, all the varied conditions of the Earth were supposed to bring about changes as to what we have now in result.

It declares that one God as a person, we believe in a personal God, a deity who is one that loves, one that's infinite in knowledge, one that's infinite in wisdom, infinite in power. And the persons of the deity are comprised of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit of God.

Yet working together, separate and distinct personalities, yet working in absolute harmony one with the other. That's something we can hardly ever comprehend ourselves because we're made so differently and we have various cross-brained characteristics that oftentimes we can't agree with one another in the simplest matters.

We call it incompatibility. But so far as the deity are concerned, they know such, no such word in their vocabulary as incompatibility. They're in absolute harmony. So the Lord could say in that position of subjection to his Father, I came not to do my own will.

But it did not indicate that he had any will different to his Father. He came to perform as God's servant what Israel as a nation who had been sent into this world to perform God's testimony and witness for mankind that they failed to do.

Adam and Eve in the garden before then failed to be a witness to God and God's service was therefore never carried out. So the Lord Jesus sent his Son and we know what they did with him. But he did carry out all God's will and words.

And so God is not an abstraction. He's not what we read in some of our books, a first cause. Some nondescript power that must have existed, they say, that produced these changes. A first cause. An unknowable.

Or the unknown. No abstraction like that. But God is a person distinct and separate from the work he had accomplished. And then to God created. That also tells us that he existed before the creation. Those are, these are outstanding factors that we must, we must register in our mind and our thinking.

That this opening verse has a multitude of indications and multitude of statements that we must take to heart and realize that eternity was before time. And time is as another has said, like an island in the midst of a shoreless sea.

An island six miles across. Each mile representing one of Earth's ages. One of Earth's days, in some scriptures it's called. And so we're going to look at that phase of things when we come to it in due course.

God's Omnipotence, Omniscience, and Omnipresence

And so in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Therefore he's infinite. He's omniscient. He knows all. He's omnipotent. He has all power. And he's omnipresent. That he is everywhere at the same time.

There's no place that he cannot be. There's no situation in which he does not have a part. Or he's either having a part in it or he's judging it. One or the other. And so we find that that is absolute primary truth from the opening sentence of this magnificent volume from God to us, his creatures.

All Truth Begins with God

Another great principle we want to remember and think of here now, which is awfully important, and that is that all truth, and all truth is found in the scriptures. All truth starts with God and then works downward to man.

All false religion, all philosophies of men begin with man and try to work up to God. And that is the secret of their fruitless search. No man has seen God at any time. No man knoweth the Father, save the Son, and he to whom the Son shall reveal him.

The natural man understandeth not the things that are of God. Neither can he know them, for they are foolishness to him. And so the natural man works up from himself. And to quote another commentator of great repute, man can only project his own line into immensity in his conception of God.

Man has proved that in his religions all down through the centuries, in the many and varied nations of the earth, in their varied histories, all religious in character, they all try to have something to worship, some object.

And no matter how grotesque, no matter what the subject is, whether it's a man or a beast or a reptile or a fish, they have chosen to project their idea into a physical form of God. So that they can only think of God along the lines of themselves.

That is lustful, ambitious, domineering, fearful temper. And they emancify every quality and characteristic of the human mind and act and reaction under any given circumstance and call that God. And that's why we have such ludicrous pictures of God in the idols of the earth.

Idolatry and the Gods of the Nations

The outstanding thing is, of course, in the, in the book of Psalms and 97, 98th Psalm, let's just check on this, it gives us an, a very clear statement, especially in the Septuagint version, 95, 95th Psalm and verse 5, all the gods, all the deities of the nations, and the, and the revised version, especially the Septuagint version, says are demons.

You remember how in, in Exodus, it says God spoke about the conditions and the gods of Egypt. They had 125 gods to worship in the major pantheon, though they had a lot of minor gods and innumerable. Every corner of the street, if we can, if they had street, had a little shrine and a little deity in it.

And every move they made, they had to bow down and offer sacrifice to this particular deity. They had a procession to the River Nile to worship the god Nilus every day. Wasn't going down to bathe, when we read of it in the book of Exodus, except to, and in some way perhaps heal their diseases, or, or do something with the holy water, like they do in the Ganges over in India.

And so we find that these deities are demons. We have a whole list in one of our books that tells us the names of the various deities, or demons, that the, the various plagues, the ten plagues, or rather the first nine plagues anyway, cover in, in defiance.

The water turned into blood. The Egyptians hated blood. And the water was an object of worship. They gave to it the credit of all creative genius and power. And frogs, that was the god of fertility, because they could multiply themselves so rapidly.

And therefore they bowed down and worshipped that. And it's a, an unseemly ceremony in the question of reproduction. And their terrible habits and ways involved all kinds of the grossest crimes and sins.

And the, the dust, the, the woman, the plague of the dust thrown up, turning into boils, was really the sacrifice at the altar of human beings. Offering babies and boys and girls in human sacrifice. And the dust of that altar was thrown up into the air by Moses at God's command.

It was a defiance of their religious program and trying to appease the god. So let's go back to the statement of fact. God begins with himself. If you'll recall, I know you're quite capable of doing so, in the tabernacle of, on the wilderness, those first three golden vessels, representing the three persons of the Trinity, occupy the introductory part of that great study.

Beginning with God in Salvation and Worship

And that is because God always begins with himself. There are those who deal with the tabernacle study from the gate, outside. That's starting with man and working upward to God. That's the way it's done in general religious circles today.

It's the treatment of man. How I can be good. How I can turn over a new leaf. How I can make a new resolution. How I can stop this and I can stop that, in order that I might attain to some kind of merit in the sight of God.

That's how man does it. But we find God's order is entirely different. And we've got to start, first of all, in our own thinking, if there's an unsaved person in the house. You've got to think of God first, not men.

Oftentimes people get occupied with men's failures. Men who will stand in position of honor and respect and prominence. And they profess to be saved people, you'll say. Well, they make mistakes. And I'll tell you the reason why they make mistakes.

Because they're like you. And we're all the same. We're all tarred with the same brush. We're all failing creatures. And you'll never be able to find a mistaking Christian as a shield and a shelter for you in your infidelity.

And so you'll find, my friend, that you'll have to stand on your own shoes and have to face your own sin and nobody else's. The hypocrite's place is in the lake of fire. God's got a place to touch. You don't have to worry about it.

You'll take care of all those who are hypocrites, if that's your trouble. I know there are some who always raise that old slogan. And so let's remember that God begins with himself. Have you begun with God?

Have you started your life by dealing with God? Your relationship to him in your life and in your future eternity depends on the way you get started. If you've got man in your eye, or if you've got a woman in your eye, you're going to fail and miserably fail in attaining to what God wants you to do and to know as the most important thing to first settle in your heart and in your life.

The rest will take its place in order. And let's hope it's under his control. And so we find then, in all our thinking, we must remember these things. We must begin with God and work down to man. We find that Paul does that.

You study his messages. God who created the earth. He started out in the Athens, a great message. And there he preached the creator and the one whom they had altered to the unknown God. He says, him that you ignorantly worship, declare I unto you.

And he started with God first. When God dealt with Moses at the burning bush, he started at the garden of Eden. And man having defected from God and relationship with him. And so we find all these great truths of scripture are the result of God as the great originator.

He is the great instigator and initiator of every movement that is for blessing. He is the instigator of every movement on earth that is for your destruction. God humbles you that you might be exalted for all eternity.

Satan exalts you now, makes you stuck up and proud. Proud and self-satisfied that he might destroy you ultimately. It's the exact opposite. These are the things we want to look at squarely in the face.

Scripture as a Book of Principles

They're simple, great, but nevertheless important principles in the word of God. And if we're interested in the study of the scriptures, and I know you all are, that's very evident tonight. It's good to get a few foundation principles of truth in the scripture.

The word of God is a book of principles. And if we don't have principles to go by, then we can stoop to all kinds of skullduggery and allow the name of Christ to be dragged in the dirt. We see it going on amongst Christians in so many places in the country today, where any unscrupulous principle is parfait, or rather it's all right if there's a little bit of money at the end of it.

A little bit of gold at the end of the rainbow. And we find that they are just simply using the things of God as a front by which they can do what they want in business. And that's, of course, thoroughly contrary to the word of God.

Then, in the beginning, God. Just stop there. This is true in connection with the divine inspiration of scripture. It came from God. Holy men of old spake as they were born along by the Holy Spirit. It was begun with God.

Preservation and Reliability of the Bible

The word of God has come into our hands, and has been preserved and kept all down through the ages. And in its beauty, too, the remarkable accuracy of the word of God has only recently been shown by the finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

How that those scrolls, the oldest manuscripts that anyone knows anything about, that have ever been found anywhere in the world, are just being disclosed now and examined by skilled men. And they find that the text of these ancient, most ancient manuscripts fit beautifully.

And they have a complete picture, or rather complete manuscript on Isaiah. And everything is in perfect harmony with what we have in our good old authorized version. It's good to know that God is the one who has not only written the book, but against all opposition, it has been preserved to us.

And many of your brethren and mine and sisters and young and old in the past history have shed their blood in order to provide us this Bible. So we thank God for it. Voltaire lived in and said he was going to put the Bible out of existence.

The strange and remarkable thing is that the place where he lived and said those words is now a Bible depot. And so it's good to realize these things. All truth begins with God. And ignoring this truth is at the basis of all false teaching.

Salvation Planned Before the Foundation of the World

Yes, now also in connection with salvation, for instance, it began with God. Take the question of Adam and Eve. Did that take God by surprise? No indeed. Because we're told in 1 Peter 1 20 that the land was chosen before in before time began and was made known unto us in the last days, in these days.

And he says for as much as you know that you were not redeemed with corruptible things as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, was made manifest unto us in these last days.

So you see God had prepared for Adam and Eve's fall in the garden by selecting his own son to be the savior of mankind. And that God's purposes of having man in in his image and in his likeness will be carried out not through man's fidelity, not through man's righteousness, but through the perfect person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

We have many scriptures in our epistles to show that that is the case. So salvation and the whole great great work of redemption began with God. We're going to see that in our study of this six circle chart.

The Ruined Creation and the Fall of Lucifer

And so we find that the second verse of our Bible presents to us an altogether different picture. And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God upon the waters.

Here we see a condition that was the result evidently of a sin, a gross terrible sin. And it's worthy of our consideration for a little while now. We turn to the book of Isaiah chapter 14. The account of what must have happened.

God speaks to it, in it, through a human personality. But it could, it goes beyond anything that could describe that personality. So obviously led of the Spirit of God, the prophet records something that is beyond anything in reference to a mere human being.

Verse 12. How 14th of Isaiah this is, and verse 12. How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning? How art thou cut down to the earth which did weaken the nation? For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven.

Notice the I wills here. I will ascend into heaven. I will exalt my throne above the stars of God. I will set also, sit also upon the mount of the congregation in the side of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the cloud.

I will be like the most high. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit. They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying, Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shape kingdoms, that made the world as a wilderness, and destroyed the cities thereof, that opened not the house of his prisoners?

Here we see a clear picture of what at least must have transpired before Adam was ever put into this world. And as far as those nations are concerned, and cities, it could possibly be the nations of angelic hosts.

Millions and millions of angels in existence, in the spirit world. And Lucifer was the highest created intelligence in the realm of angels. And it could be that they dwelt, right here perhaps many of them, in this very world in which we live.

It could be, if you'll just stop and think, that when, after having been punished and degraded, as he is described to be in this passage and others, why he watched God turn a beautiful reconstructed earth over into the hands of a man and a woman.

And he set his mind to rob them of it all and get it back under his control. By temptation, by doubting God, by suggesting that God wasn't fair and kind and true. And thus he saw what was once his domain turned over to some human being.

And he knew of course how to get around them and make them give it all up. And now he is still, by God's allowance, the God of this world. And when Jesus was here on earth, even he, Satan, presented to him all the kingdoms of the earth in a moment of time.

And Jesus said they don't belong to you. No he didn't say that. No, because he was, I doubt, if I can speak with reverence, I doubt not, but what he was thinking of the second psalm. Where God the Father said to his son, ask of me and I will give thee the nations of the earth for thine inheritance.

And so on. And so we see that Satan very, very obviously did something that was the cause of the cataclysmic overthrow of the beauty and glory of the original creation. Now let's turn to Ezekiel chapter 28.

Ezekiel 28 and the Judgment of the Proud Cherub

For another such confirmation shall we say of that statement. In the 28th chapter of Ezekiel, verse 11 through to 19. Moreover the word of the Lord came unto me saying, this is page 871 if it will help you in scope your Bible.

Moreover the word of the Lord came unto me saying, Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of tyrants and say unto him, Thou set the Lord God. Thou sealest up the sun full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.

Thou hast been in Eden, the garden of God. You see how it goes beyond any ordinary king of tyrants. Every precious stone was thy covering. The sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold.

The workmanship of thy tablets and of thy pipes was prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created. Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth, and I have set thee so. Thou wast upon the holy mountain of God.

Thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. Thou wast perfect in all thy ways from the day that thou wast created till iniquity was found in thee. By the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned.

Therefore I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God, and I will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire. Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty. Thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness.

I will cast thee to the ground. I will lay thee before kings that they may behold thee. Thou hast defiled thy sanctuaries with the multitude of thine iniquities. By the iniquity of thy traffic, therefore, will I bring forth a fire from the midst of thee.

It shall devour thee, and I will bring thee to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all them that behold thee. All they that know thee among the people shall be astonished at thee. Thou shalt be a terror, and never shalt be any more.".

He's going to be put in the lake of fire eventually. Thou never shalt be any more. In other words, we see what will happen to all, even of the human race, who succumb to his temptations and his allurement by the attractive baubles of earth, and all the beauty and loveliness and pleasure of sin.

And sin is pleasant. There's no question about that. Don't ever let anybody think that I, we don't think that sin's pleasant. We know what it is. But we know, too, that it will bring us to destruction.

It'll bring us to disaster. And it's something to shun. And so we see, on the other side of the ledger, turn with me to the 54th chapter of Isaiah. Isaiah 54. Will you pardon? I'm wrong. Anyway, in one of these verses, it says that the earth was not created tohu and bohu.

Isaiah 45:18 and the Purpose of Reconstruction

No, it wasn't created without form and void. I missed my verse here. I'm sorry. 45? Thank you. I have to help. I was hoping somebody would help me out. Yes, 18th verse of 45. I got my numbers around the wrong way.

I had 54. 45. Thank you. For thus, 18th verse, for thus saith the Lord that created the heaven, God himself that formed the earth and made it, he hath established it, he created it not in thine, tohu.

The same word in the original as that in the second verse of Genesis 1. He created not in thine. He formed it to be inhabited. I am Jehovah, and there is none else. Thanks very much for helping me out on that spot.

And so we find that God in his infinite grace has given us a clear picture of a perfect original creation. And that it fell. It became null and void. It became a ruined thing. And God in his infinite grace has given us a pattern now of reconstruction.

And that's what we'll go into tomorrow night. I'm going to try and keep to the hour. One hour. You'll get here on time, start on time, and finish on time, because I know you folks work hard, and of course preachers never work hard, and so we have to be sympathetic with the hardworking people.

But in the meantime, will you remember these meetings in prayer? We are very anxious not merely to attract big crowds. I'm anxious to help the Lord's people in the study of the book, the Bible, the word of God.

I'm most anxious to know more about it myself, and I guarantee I'm the most eager student in the room. I'm anxious to give what little I may know, and I want you to share it with me. So we'll stop here just now, and start again tomorrow night where we've left off, and then we'll start on this side of the chart, and maybe you can get a sketch of your own.