Book of Genesis - Ch. 1, Vs. 1-8 (03/21/2004)

Open your Bibles to page 1. Genesis.

Genesis. I want us to think.

Place yourself. Go back, if you will, if you can, to before the beginning.

What do you see, John? All right.

Debbie, what do you see? Darkness.

I see no space. This is before the beginning. Greg, what do you see?

Bob? So you didn't go back.

Well, we all have some picture in mind. It's hard for me to picture nothing, but in our way of speaking, there was nothing.

There was only God. Now, Debbie, I cannot fathom that, but that's what he says, and I have to go along with what he says.

In the first verse, it reads like this. In the beginning,

God created the heaven and the earth. Now, the

Hebrew for all of that is, Bereshith bara

Elohim et hashemayim v 'heretz.

A literal translation of that would be, beginning created

God as substance, heavens, and earth. Now, man cannot think outside of time without using time.

David, how do we think outside of time? Bob, did you ever try to describe something that you had never seen?

All right, it's rather obvious that we think in time, so we will put a beginning to everything.

In the beginning, this is a period of remote, unknown antiquity, hid in the depths of eternity.

God, the name of the supreme being.

Now, in the Hebrew, it signifies strong and mighty in its expression of omnipotent power, and by its use here in the plural form, is obscurely taught at the opening of the

Bible. Now, we have the word Elohim. It's plural.

David, what do I mean by it is plural? All right, it teaches a doctrine of which is very strong, and we find it throughout the

Bible. It's revealed in any part that you put down in, and it teaches though God is one, there is a plurality of persons.

Now, I'm not about to explain the Trinity to you, but suffice to say the

Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. This is the Godhead.

David and I have talked a lot about this, that God is in three people, three persons.

They're engaged in the creative work. We find all of them engaged in the creative work, but we can't explain it.

We can talk about it. When you come to the word create.

Now, he created all of this. It was not formed in any pre -existent material, but it was made out of nothing.

There was not something in front of God, and he made it over into this creation.

There was nothing, nothing but God, and he created this.

Now, we're going to run across a word made and a word create. There is a difference.

Keep that in mind. Created is from nothing, from a non -existent something.

He made things out of the dirt, the water, so on and so forth, after he had created.

So try to hold that separate. It will come into play later.

The substance of the universe, heaven and the earth. This first verse is a general introduction to the inspired volume, declaring the great and important truth that all things had a beginning.

So now everything has a beginning, and when he says beginning, he's talking about at that moment.

Are you with me? That nothing throughout the wide extent of nature existed from eternity.

Originated, none of it originated by chance, or from the skill of any inferior agent, but that the whole universe was produced by the creativity or the power of God.

If you want to write down these references, Acts 17 24 and Romans 11 36.

So God has spoken this world into existence.

He has spoken space, the earth, the heavens, the stars, the suns, everything into existence.

How much of it, Greg, has man discovered? A very small part.

Yet there's billions of stars, planets, all of this, but that is but a small portion of the creation.

In the second verse, and the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, and the

Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. Now between verse 1 and verse 2,

I was taught in college that there is a wide gap. That's not true.

There is no gap between 1 and 2. You'll follow the chronological and physical order of this as we progress.

God it seems at first to have created the elementary principles of all things, and this form and grand mass of matter, which in the state must be without arrangement or any distinction of parts, a vast collection of undesirable materials of nameless existence, strangely mixed.

In other words, it was a soft, thick, lump, or mass commonly called a glob.

So we have this glob in front of us. Joy, I'm a way off outside of space looking at this, and it is a glob.

Space isn't even there. I used that term wrong. It's hard, but this is the way it was.

When this, yes, yes, the earth was without form and void.

Now form and void, it had no form.

It was, we'd say pliable. It moved around, and it was void.

It was empty. Now how could the substance be empty,

Debbie? We've never seen anything like this.

Man cannot, of course man can't create, but man cannot make a substance that is void.

We'll find out more about that in a moment. When this elementary principle was brought together,

God was pleased, and he was pleased to spend six days in uniting, assorting, arranging the materials out of which he had built up not only the earth, but the whole of the solar system.

The Spirit of God moved, literally continued brooding over it as a fowl does when hatching her eggs.

This word brooding has given rise to many, many doctrines. This may be also where the people get the idea that it was hatched out of an egg because of the word brooding, and there's lots of people, lots of cultures say this was an egg.

I can't buy that. I'd hate to see the chicken. The immediate agents, agency of the

Spirit, by working on the inactive and disordered elements, combined, arranged, and ripened them into a state adapted for being the scene of a new creation is coming.

First we've got the glob. The account of this new creation properly begins at the end of the second verse, and the details of process are described in the natural way, natural way, as an onlooker looking at it has done.

Now the onlooker is going to relate the changes as they come. Remember, it's all here in the glob.

And God said, let there be light, and there was light.

Now I know I did not announce this last week for you to study, but Greg has been studying it.

When this phrase, let there be light, and it occurs repeatedly in the account, what does it mean?

Many have asked the question, how could light be produced on the first day when the

Sun didn't come until the fourth day? Can you help us out,

Greg? Oh, now we're getting somewhere.

It isn't the light itself, it's the power behind that light. What is the very first thing, now after we have the glob, what's the very next step that would be absolutely necessary before there could be anything made,

John? Well, all of you be thinking, what's the very next step that has to be made before we could begin to build things,

Joy? The heaven and earth have not come out yet.

They're in this glob that we've got. Well, you're getting awfully close.

All right, that's close. Yes, that's it.

I believe it was at this moment that God spoke the atomic structure into the glob.

The original word, as Greg pointed out, is the power behind the light.

Well, a form of electricity. Let me catch up here.

Yes, or that's what

Greg was speaking of. It's not the light, it's the power behind the light, the ore.

Yes, and from it comes our structure. In other words, if you can see the glob out here, then

God speaks into it friction, which produces heat, which would produce the ore.

So friction had to be there before there could be anything else built. Are you following?

Was that, I couldn't tell if this was, all right.

The electric fluid, it's been used, the word's been used for lightning and for sun.

God has diffused the matter of caloric or latent heat. Caloric heat or latent heat.

Give us the definition, Greg. Yes. All right.

Does caloric mean roughly the same thing? All right.

Now, God has diffused this matter of latent heat or caloric heat through every part of nature.

Think about it. Everything that we touch, we eat, we look at, everything, there is heat in it.

I don't know. Might be. It has a lot less heat than most things.

The existence of this caloric latent or primitive light, friction, may be ascertained in various other bodies that can be produced by the flint and steel, by rubbing two hard sticks together.

Or by hammering cold iron. What happens to iron if you beat it repeatedly?

It'll get hot if you are at it long enough. Friction is the general, in general, produces both fire and light.

God, therefore, created this universal agent on the first day because without it, no operation of nature could be carried on or perfected.

So, the second thing was, he said, let there be light. Now, without that step, nothing else can be made.

Four, God saw this light and it was good.

So, what does that tell us about what he had made, David? He was pleased with it.

Now, can, David, can you see anything that God makes in that he says, well, that's good enough?

No. Perfect. And God saw the light, that it was good, and God divided the light from the darkness.

Now, when he spoke that atomic structure, that friction, or when he said, let there be light, when he spoke that into the glob, what happened,

Greg, to the glob? Well, it's in glob form, it's moving around, it's without form, it's without, it's void, and we spoke the atomic structure into it, which applies to everything in the world, what would happen to that glob?

Yes, it became a glob.

That's right. It took shape. Now, in the fourth verse, we have it structured, it's a glob, and he divided the light from the darkness.

Now, this throws you off if you're still thinking about the light.

He created the light, but we decided that that was what gave it form and shape, and it become a glob.

Now, what did he do when he divided the light from the darkness, John? Yes, that's what it is.

He gave it a kick, and it began to spin. Now, which way does it spin?

The right way. Yes. All right, by a spinning, would that not set up the dividing of the light and the day?

We don't have to have light and day for it to be prepared for that, but that's what took place.

He spun it. The word simply refers us by anticipation to the rotation of the earth around its own axis once in 23 hours, 56 minutes, and 4 seconds.

So, we're traveling how fast, Greg? David, how fast are we spinning?

A thousand miles an hour takes 24 hours. We don't know that.

The gravity is holding me here, so we don't know that we're spinning.

But we are. We know the earth is rotating. God gave this rotation to the earth.

Now, in verse 5, and God called the light day, and darkness he called night, and the evening and the morning were the first day.

So, first he spoke into existence the mass, the glob.

The next thing he had to do was to bring order to it. So, he spoke into it friction, which immediately made it snap together and it become a globe.

Everything in free space, in its free form, is round.

Now, if it's a different shape, then something has affected it, but everything in its natural state in free space is a globe, a drop of water or whatever you're measuring.

That's right, or it would all fly apart.

So, there had to be gravity. The natural day, as the mention of its two parts clearly determined, and Moses reckons according to the

Oriental way of evening to morning instead of morning to evening, as we do.

Now, we come to verse 6. I think this will be the last one today.

Verse 6, and God said, isn't that wonderful?

What if God had never said anything? We take it just for a starting place that there is a

God. That was so natural to me

I never thought about. Maybe there isn't, but there is a God. And God said, let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters and let it divide the waters from the waters.

Now, science has discovered that the earth was at one time enveloped in water.

There was a band of water around the earth. The remnants of it are still there.

They've discovered that. Now, what does this mean? It is as though you took a tennis ball and suspended it inside a basketball.

Can you get that picture? Tennis ball suspended in the side of a basketball.

The space between the outer surface of the tennis ball and the inner surface of the basketball is the firmament.

It means space. God made the firmament and divided the waters which are under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament.

So, God has divided the waters.

Now, Debbie, where did these waters come from? Alright, he had everything in the beginning.

He's expanding now and he divides the waters from the waters.

And I found one or two references to that canopy of water. I looked for them this week and I could not find where I had found that.

But, suffice to say, there was a canopy of water.

Now, what was the purpose of that canopy, Greg? Yes, we're told what happens later.

What purpose would there be, John? There must be a purpose.

Alright. He made it a greenhouse. He made it perfect.

The perfect environment for everything to grow. Alright.

God made this space, this firmament. And he divided the waters that were on the globe from the waters that were around the globe.

Now, how far out this extended, I don't know. Yes. Yes.

He's outside of his creation. Yes. That's so true.

He's outside of space now. God has not come into this space. When he does, it's in the form of Jesus Christ.

So, he's doing all of this out in front of him. God called the firmament heaven and the evening and the morning were the second day.

Well, I told you wrong. We've got time for one more. Now he's ready to produce the dry ground.

That, John, would be the next step if he's going to put me on this earth.

I'm not going to tread water all the time. I've got to walk on dry ground. God said, let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place and let the dry land appear.

And it was so. Waters. Dry land. The dirt and the water was all mixed together in a soupy, well, you women know what a thin or thick soup consistency is.

And that was the way that it looked. It was. I've got to stop in the dry earth.

Dry land appeared. Now, start with that verse next week, but I want you to think of this dry ground.

If the water was to be all connected, where was the earth?

Where was the dirt? Where was the terra firma? Where was the part that I walk on?

Think about that. Now, are there questions? I'm sure there should be questions concerning up to this point.

All right. The water, everything is first all stirred together.

There is no dry ground. There is no pure water because it's all mixed together.

David, that's right.

That's right. Why? So, food is the only source of life.

And the fruit is not made. It's God's self, or the Lord's life. And the food is private. And if you go forward in the future, after now there was hell.

Well, I read a lot of books concerning that state. And what's interesting is that the

Greeks are, what do you call that, plenty of studies that show there is a way to veil themselves from the image of the natural and God -less person.

When you look down as far as other natures, that is, it veils itself.

It's food. But it is very well here.

So, you can't see God. Yet, we see

God beyond all that. That's right.

That's absolutely right. That's right.

When he spoke, let there be light, and he put that friction, that energy, that atomic structure, it came from a source.

It had to come from him. Isn't that wonderful?

Alright, next week, we're going over the same thing. Bob, would you dismiss this, please?

Alright, Father, as we study this wonderful creation, we're in awe to our part in this creation.

Lord, we're all struck by the creator himself. I'm thankful that we have this book.

We may learn about the creator, serve the creator, realize what he's done for us.

He's chosen us to be part of his family. We just can't thank him enough. Drive this home into our hearts.

Motivate us to follow his footsteps. He's done it for us. We ask you,

Lord, Holy Spirit, you among us. May it be a blessed time together for you.