Eternity to Eternity 04 Genesis 1:1 — Joseph Balsan

To return to Genesis chapter one, I remember Brother McCullough and I were holding meetings on this chart in Houston, and we went seven weeks. And one brother said to me, as the meetings were closing, he says, I got so tired of listening to that first chapter of Genesis read every night.

Well, I'm sure that he got that first chapter of Genesis down, so I hope that as we read it as frequently as we do, perhaps we'll be able to memorize it. Genesis one and verse one. In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth, 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.

The First Three Days of Creation

And God said, Let there be light, and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good, and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light day, and the darkness he called night, and the evening and the morning were the first day.

And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament, and it was so.

And God called the firmament heaven, and the evening and the morning were the second day. And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear, and it was so.

And God called the dry land earth, and the gathering together of the waters called he seas. And God saw that it was good, and God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself upon the earth, and it was so.

And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself after his kind. And God saw that it was good, and the evening and the morning were the third day.

Abraham’s Call and Blessing

Let us turn to Genesis chapter 12. Genesis chapter 12. Genesis 12. Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will show thee, and I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great, and thou shalt be a blessing.

And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse them that curse thee, and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed. So Abram departed as the Lord had spoken unto him, and Lot went with him.

And Abram was seventy and five years old when he departed out of Haran. And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother's son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran, and they went forth to go into the land of Canaan.

And into the land of Canaan they came. And Abram passed through the land unto the place of Sikkim, unto the plain of Morah, and the Canaanite was then in the land. And the Lord appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land.

And there builded he an altar unto the Lord, who appeared unto him. And he removed from thence unto a mountain on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, having Bethel on the west, and Haii on the east.

And there he builded an altar unto the Lord, and called upon the name of the Lord. And Abram journeyed, going on still toward the south. May the Lord bless to us the reading of his word. Tonight, on this third day, we have had the first two days brought before us in the last two nights.

We are reminded, and I think it's very worth repeating, that each of these six days of reconstruction, they foreshadow, or they picture for us, the six days of God's dealings with mankind, the six ages or dispensations in which God is dealing with men.

Now, we want to notice that about these various days, that these days, or these ages, you might say are not compartmentalized. That is to say, what is done in one day does not only remain in that day, but it continues on to other days.

In other words, just as in creation, when God brought light in the first day, why, of course, there was light also in the second day, and the second day, of course, he formed the atmosphere which makes it possible for man to live upon the face of the earth.

The Earth’s Suitability and the Spiritual Realm

Now, isn't it remarkable that the earth that you and I live in is perfectly suited to your life and mine here? For a number of years, scientists have been thinking that perhaps there was life on other planets like Venus, and Mars, and other planets.

Well, since the days when they have been able to send these rockets, or satellites, or whatever you want to call them, to these various other planets that bring back photographs and other things to bring before them what these planets are like, while they are learning that human life such as lives on this planet is not existing on other planets in our solar system like Mars, and Venus, and Jupiter, and other planets in our present solar system.

Now, of course, that does not mean that there are not intelligences in the universe around us. We know from the word of God that the word of God speaks to us of principalities and powers in heavenly places.

We know according to the word of God, the third chapter of Ephesians, that by the church God is making known unto principalities and powers in heavenly places his manifold, or his many-colored wisdom.

So, I do believe that there are other intelligences in the universe around us, or in the universes around us, but just where they are we do not know. But, this earth on which we live is perfectly suited for you and me, for mankind to live on it, and we find that the atmosphere which God brought in the second day when he said, let there be a firmament, or let there be an expanse that divides the waters above from the waters beneath, is the atmosphere which enables you and me to live upon this earth.

And, of course, I'm sure that there are those of us here, many of us, who have had the experience of going up into the mountains, and as the higher we get the more rarefied the atmosphere becomes, and the more difficult it is to endure those altitudes without discomfort or inconvenience.

I remember some years ago we went up into the Rockies, and we went up to one of Mount Evans, and then we started to climb some of the higher places from Mount Evans, and I remember how dizzy I began to get, and so I thought to myself, I better get down, and we did.

Well, we find that as we get up into the atmosphere and it becomes more rarefied, it's more difficult for man to live, and so we find that it's perfectly suited, and we brought in how that pictures for us that second age from the time of the blood when Noah and his family came out of the ark, and I always think it's very significant.

Noah’s Altar and Deliverance from the Old World

I didn't mention last night, but I think it's significant that when Noah and his family came out, the first thing that they did according to Genesis 8 and verse 20 is, you notice what it says, and Noah built an altar unto the Lord, and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on his altar.

The first thing that Noah did when he came out of the ark was he built an altar. In other words, he was thankful to the Lord for his deliverance and for his salvation. I just wonder if everyone in the audience tonight can thank God for salvation.

Can we thank God for his delivering in our lives, that he's delivered us from the penalty of our sins, that he's delivered us from the power of Satan, that he has taken us out of the world, and he's brought us into a new creation, just as he did with the ark.

You know, first Peter chapter three is a very difficult portion for some people. Let us turn to first Peter chapter three for a moment, and you'll notice that here it says in the 20th verse, which sometimes were disobedient when once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah while the ark was a preparing wherein few, that is eight souls, were saved by water or through water.

The light figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us, not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is gone into heaven and is on the right hand of God, angels and authorities and powers being made subject unto him.

Now, that word save in the 21st verse, in what sense does baptism now save us? The picture is taken of the ark and the flood. What did the ark or what did the flood save Noah and his family from? Well, Noah and his family were in an ungodly world.

It was a world that was filled with violence and corruption. When they went into that ark, and the Lord shut the door, and the flood came from the flood by the ark. Something else, and that is the thought here.

It first then says it is not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God. That ark, as it went through the waters of the flood, that flood destroyed, condemned and destroyed that entire nation or country, and that ark, when the waters, when Noah and his family, they were all together.

They were in a new creation. They were done with the old, sinful world of the past. They were in a new fellowship. I remember a young woman who was being baptized. They were there watching her being baptized, and as she went down into the waters of baptism, while her worldly friends were waving their handkerchiefs, as though they were saying to her, goodbye, expect to see you in our pursuits, and in our pleasure-seeking pursuits from henceforth.

She was taken from her old companions, a new center of life, a new fellowship, and so it is with that she took them out of the old creation, and it brought Noah and his family into a new creation. The fact that they had a new element was introduced to them by God himself in chapter Roman.

Government, Babel, and Human Rebellion

The powers that be and be obedient as long as you disobey his eye, the Lord, or whereby you and I, the Christian has a threefold duty to the government. First of all, to obey it, to pay taxes, to support it, to pray for those who are in authority.

First Timothy chapter 2 tells us we are to pray for kings, peace of all life, to not govern himself. Noah, selflessness, drunkenness, brought shame upon himself, brought a curse upon his son, and his son-in-law would reach unto heaven, he would make a name for himself.

You know, there are some people who believe that there was something more than just building a tower involved here, that man wanted to reach into the heavens, that man wanted to discover some secret of the universe.

He would reach into the heavens, he would make a name for himself, he would make a name which would be the gathering center, and as I pointed out last night, we have a picture here in seed of Babylon the great, a great religious system which men are building, not the gate, but is really and truly only confusion.

The Third Day: Dry Land, Vegetation, and God’s Simple Word

Come to the third day, and you notice in the third, twice, every other day God speaks once, of the language of that day so that they could understand it. To the people of our day, a few years ago, while Life magazine, a series of articles, Life began, and how the various things in creation were brought into existence.

Now I try to look at some of those things and read them, and how confused your mind gets trying to follow their terms and trying to follow their explanation. How different is God? I think there are these hundred and something words that bring before us some tremendous, tremendous truths.

We have first of all, the truth under the heaven, be gathered into, in this entire third day of more than one syllable. All the other words are of one syllable when God describes the great, be gathered together into one place.

Let the dry land appear, and it was so. God said, let the earth bring forth fruit. There we have the great science of botany, and you notice, who we believe is the writer of this, how Moses brings before us the vegetable world.

First of all, the grass, then the herbs, and then the tree, that these never becomes a tree. It was only the nineteenth century that an Austrian monk by the name of Mendel, the theory that is now known as, and scientists today agree that his law is with cats, reproduce, reproduce, be able to cross them, but they can't make them reproduce.

Man has crossed, and he's brought forth the mule. There are different varieties. There are different varieties. There comes a potato, a carrot, a potato. Each one of them retain their kind. Reproduces are today with all the latest, never gets, and yet the Bible, of course, is not given to us to teach us science.

The Bible is given to us to teach us about the Lord. The Lord doesn't give us any details as to how these things happen. He says, let the waters be gathered together into one place. Let the dry land appear.

We want to remember that after the second day, if the light revealed anything, as the atmosphere was brought into being, separating the waters above from the waters beneath, if you and I could have been in a spaceship and looked down upon the earth, nothing but a sphere submerged in water, not a single foot.

And the third picture too, how did Moses know of the earth? And you can look at all the various oceans, the Pacific Ocean, the Atlantic Ocean, the Indian Ocean, and all the various other oceans. They all have their particular spheres where they are, and yet if you look at a globe, you'll notice that in one way or another, all of these oceans, he says, let the waters be gathered together into one place, because it is a known fact that no two oceans, you might say, well, the Pacific Ocean, so is the Atlantic Ocean, but those are two different bodies of water.

The saline content of those bodies is different, and the fish in those bodies, in those oceans, the distinction is maintained in scripture, and yet they all have water together. Let the dry land appear, and it was so.

God called the dry land earth, and the gathering together of the waters called the sea. It was the third age. We saw how that when man, in his pride, began to build the Tower of Babel, God came down into a few languages.

Our nations were born, and we find this green line here, which pictures for us the nations of the world in the waters. How can we use the waters as a picture of the nations? Let's turn for a moment to Revelation chapter 17.

Revelation chapter 17, in the 15th verse, and he saith unto me, the waters which thou saw first sitteth, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues, so there we have God before us, and peoples, and tongues, and is different from the water, of course, the nations of the world.

What does the earth picture for us? Well, the earth pictures for us the emergence of that nation, which is different from all the other nations, and which is not considered as among the nations, and that is the nation of Israel.

Israel Distinguished Among the Nations

Turn for a moment to Numbers chapter 23. You'll notice here in Philem's prophecy an announcement concerning the nation of Israel. Notice, you remember how Philem, the people of Israel, and how in his seventh verse he took up his parable and said, Belak, the king of Moab, hath brought me from Aram out of the mountains of the east, saying, Come, curse me, Jacob, and come, defy Israel.

How shall I curse whom I defy, whom the Lord hath not defied? For from the top of the rocks I see him, and from the hills I behold him. Lo, the people shall not be reckoned among the nations. Who can count the dust of Jacob, and the number of the fourth part of Israel?

Now, there we have brought forth a prophecy that has been true from its very beginning to its very end. He says, Lo, the people shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations. So, as the waters are distinguished from those nations, in the earth emerging out of the waters is the nation of Israel.

And I might say, Old Testament, of God, people from the twelfth chapter of Genesis with the nation of Israel. And nations in the word of God as they are in relation to the nation of Israel. In school, one of my favorite historical characters, Carthage, he was the leader of Carthage.

You remember how he crossed the Alps, how he conquered the world of his day. And yet, you come to the Bible, you don't find anything about Hannibal or Carthage or any of those, many of those ancient nations that are so important to historians of today.

Why? Because the Bible considers nations only important as they are related to the nation of Israel. Because the nation of Israel are the people whom God is dealing with in the Old Testament in order to bring forth through them, as we shall see, his great purpose.

If you turn to Genesis chapter 22 for a moment, remember Genesis 22 is a very important chapter, because Genesis 22 brings before us the offering of Isaac, which is such a beautiful figure of the offering of the Lord Jesus.

And in the fourteenth verse, when Abram is told to spare his son and offer the ram instead of his son, the fourteenth verse says, Abram called the name of that place Jehovah-Jireh, as it is said to this day, in the mount of the Lord it shall be seen.

And the angel of the Lord called unto Abram out of heaven the second time and said, By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, for because thou hast done this thing and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and as the sand which is upon the seashore.

And thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because thou hast obeyed my voice. Now, in that seventeenth verse, we have a very important promise to Abram.

He was given the promise that he would give him a seed as numerous as the stars of heaven for multitude, and as the sand which is upon the seashore for number. Now, if Abram had said to the people of his day, God has given me a promise of heaven as innumerable as the stars of heaven, people might have said to him, What do you mean?

Well, we have cataloged every star in the heavens, and we know that there are only three thousand and something stars in the entire heavens. So, how can they be without number? How can you make a comparison of stars without number and liken it also to sands of the seashore without number?

And if we had been alive in Abram's day, we might have laughed and said, Abram, you're crazy. Stars without number? Why, we can count every star in the heavens, but since man has brought forth his telescopes, what does he find?

He finds that stars are without number. We know that sands of the seashore are without number, but the point we want to get across is this, that these are not two and the same thing. They are two different things.

Israel and the Church in Galatians

See, not to be confounded. Many people, when they read the prophecies of the Old Testament, and they read about Israel, they say, Well, the promises to Israel of a kingdom, of a glorious reign of Christ, why, those are all to be spiritualized.

Israel is the church, and all the promises to Israel now belong to the church. Well, my friends, that is not true. When God speaks of Israel, he means Israel, and it never means anything else but Israel.

The church is never called Israel. Never, never in the Bible is the church. The only time we have any hint that some people might think that the church is Israel is in the sixth chapter of Galatians, where Paul speaks of the Israel of God.

Turn for a moment to the sixth chapter of the epistle to the Galatians, and verse Jesus, Neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation. As walk according to this rule, peace be on them, and mercy according to this rule of the new creation, of the new birth, peace be on them, Israel of God.

The Israelites who are saved by believing the gospel, they are the Israel of God. The Gentiles who believe are the first of the Gentile believers, because you don't have the truth of the church in the epistle to the Galatians, but you do have the Gentile who walks according to the rule of the new creation, and the Israel of God, the true gospel of God.

You become an Israelite, and neither do you if you are a Gentile, but if you are a Jew who believes the gospel, the true Israel of God. So we want to remember that God gave Abram the promise he came into being.

We have it in the twelfth chapter of Genesis. God said, let the waters be gathered together into one place, let the dry land appear, and it was so. Here in the twelfth chapter of Genesis, we have the story of how Abram was called.

If we were to turn to the seventh chapter of Acts, if we were to turn to the twenty-third chapter of Joshua, we would find that Abraham was an idolater in Ur of the Chaldeans, that he was worshiping idols, when suddenly he had a vision of the glory of God, or the God of glory.

Acts chapter 7 says, The God of glory appeared unto Abram, and when Abram had that vision of the God of glory, his idols into insignificance. He saw that they were worthless idols. His heart was drawn to the living God, and then he heard the call of God.

God’s Call to Become a New Creation

God said, the Lord said, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, from thy father's house unto a land, that I will show thee, and I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee, and make thy name great, and thou shalt be a blessing.

And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse them that curse thee, and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed. Here we find, first of all, that Abram will have a spiritual seed, and Abram will have the weather of the sea, or of the earthly sea.

To be children of Abram, we must have the faith. We must have an experience like the experience he had to hear the voice of God. He heard the voice of God calling to him, calling him from his idols, calling him from his surroundings, calling him from his relationships, calling him into a land that he would show him.

And there God says, I will make of thee, and thou shalt be a blessing, and make something of him. That's what God wants to do with every sinner. God wants to make something of him. God wants to make him a new creature in Christ.

The prodigal son, when he left his father, he said to him, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me. When he came back to the father, he was going to pray, make me. His father did make him. What did he make him?

He gave him a new robe. He gave him a new ring. He put shoes on his feet, a ring on his hand. He put him at his table. He made him a son. He put him in the place of sonship. The sinner today, when he calls the sinner, calls him from his idols, calls him with a revelation of himself, a revelation of his glory at the place called Calvary, where God shows himself through the Lord Jesus to be the God who loves the sinner, and has made provision for his sin, and wants to forgive his sin.

And it's the glory of God today to forgive a sinner his sins, and to make him a new creature in Christ Jesus. God says, I will make. I wonder if every one of us in the meeting tonight have had that experience, that God made us new creatures.

Have we had that birth from above, that birth from God? We were not only made new creatures, but we were blessed. God says, I will bless thee. Oh, how he blesses the soul that comes to Christ. He blesses that soul with spiritual blessings, forgiveness, eternal life, peace, joy, hope, a place of sonship.

What wonderful blessings he bestows upon the soul that hears his call and obeys. And God says, thou shalt be a blessing. And how true! It's only when we ourselves have been blessed that we in turn can become a blessing to others.

And God tells us, I will bless them that bless thee, and curse them that curse thee. And how true that is, that God's hand was upon Abraham, and upon his seed, when he kept them to the varying circumstances that they passed through, just so God preserves and protects us.

Christ as the Blessing to All Nations

But God not only blessed Abraham personally, but he says, in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed. From Abram was come to come the one through whom all the families of the earth would be blessed.

And who is that one? That one is the Lord Jesus Christ. Because it's only through the Lord Jesus that all families of the earth could be blessed. So, Abram was going to be personally blessed, and Abram was going to become the channel through which the Savior would come.

And then notice further down, it says in the seventh verse, And the Lord appeared unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land, and to his seed will I give the land. We could go to the 15th chapter of Genesis, we could go to the 17th chapter of Genesis, we could go to the 22nd chapter of Genesis, and find out how God repeats that promise to Abram.

We could go to the 26th chapter of Genesis, and find out how God repeats that promise to Isaac. We could go to the 28th chapter of Genesis, and the 35th chapters of Genesis, and we could find out how God repeats that promise to Jacob.

The Arab today doesn't believe that Palestine is going to become the possession of the Jews. The Arab today says there's only one way there will be peace in the world. There's only one way there will be peace in Palestine in the Middle East, and that is exterminate and destroy the Jews.

Drive Israel out of the land of Palestine. They can never have it. As long as Israel lives in the land of Palestine, there will be no peace. That is Jacob. He says, I will give it to them for an ever more seed.

I'm going to give this land the entire kingdom age of our Lord Jesus. His people with whom God deals, and as we shall see in the future, and perhaps tomorrow night, and the night after, we're going to deal with this third day especially.

We're going to find out in what way God was going to manifest himself through them, and what God desired from that people. But we see that his people, Israel, are the people that he separates from all the nations of the world, on which he called into being when he called Abraham, separated him from his idols, from his old land, blessed him, made him great, preserved him, and protected him, and through him brought blessings just as he today make him a new creature, bless him, preserve him, and make him a blessing that he might be a channel in this dark.

I wonder if every one of us here tonight have heard his call. I wonder if every one of us here tonight have obeyed his call. I wonder if every one of us here tonight have been born from above, made new creatures in Christ.

If not, all ye that labor, the one who died on Calvary's cross with his arms outstretched, with outstretched arms tonight, inviting you to come to him. Shabbat shalom.