Light into Darkness

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I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to Genesis chapter 1.
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Since we began looking at Genesis several weeks ago, we have looked at various aspects of theology.
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We have discussed how the universe and all that is in it had a beginning, that the universe is not eternal.
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We have seen that the creation of the universe was a Trinitarian act, an act involving the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
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And we have discussed the concepts of creation ex nihilo, out of nothing, and by divine fiat, meaning that God spoke creation into existence.
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The universe is not eternal, but God is.
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And so we have discussed many theological truths from Genesis 1 and 1.
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And all these are essential truths, all these are essential theological doctrines, and they are contained in just these first few verses.
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And theology does matter.
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We should know these things.
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Theology matters and we should study these things.
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We should recognize these things.
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But theology depends upon good exegesis.
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Exegesis means reading out of the text what is there.
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It's the opposite of eisegesis, or reading into the text something that isn't there.
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So really what I'm saying is that good theology begins with good Bible study.
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Good theology begins with good Bible understanding.
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And so we ought to draw our theology out of the Bible, not impose our theology into the Bible.
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And so having said that, what I want to do this morning is something a little different because we have looked at all these grand theological concepts.
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This morning what I'd like to do is I'd like to actually walk through the verses sort of in a narrative form, the first four verses of Genesis, and sort of treat it almost as if we were doing a Bible study.
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And I want to point out some things that, because we've been so focused on the theological paradigms that I might not have mentioned in the weeks past, and I don't want to move on without mentioning these important truths.
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Now I do have my whiteboard.
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Don't be afraid.
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This is eventually going to become a permanent fixture in my life.
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I'm just going to have it attached to my back, and I can just flip it out anytime I need it.
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But I want to bring up some points with you this morning, and sometimes it's helpful just to be able to make a note for you.
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But before we go any further, I don't want to forego the reading of Scripture, and I invite you to stand with me as we read the Word of God, as we give honor and reverence.
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We're only going to read to verse four, because next week when we get to verse five, we're going to start talking about those days of creation and what that word day means and how we understand it.
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But because we're not going to get to that today, we're going to stop our reading at verse four.
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In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
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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.
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And God said, Let there be light, and there was light.
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And God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness.
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May God add His blessings to the reading and to the hearing of His Word.
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May He write its eternal truths upon our heart, and may He keep me from error as I preach.
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You may be seated.
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Today we're going to focus on three major points of this text.
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One, I want to examine the literary unit of thought, and that's how we're going to walk through it.
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I want us also to see that there is a comparison that can be made between the creation account in Genesis and some other historical accounts that are from other religions.
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And I want to show how Moses is not drawing from those other religions, and yet that is often what is accused, and I want to show why I don't believe that's true, and obviously why as Christians we shouldn't believe that's true.
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And then I'm going to finish today by looking at the analogy between the light and the darkness that we see in Genesis 1-1, and the New Testament's example of light and darkness that we see Christ coming into the world as the light into darkness.
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So that's to outline the overview of what we're going to do, but we're going to spend most of our time simply looking at verses 1-4 as a literary unit.
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And so let's begin with verse 1.
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We've already read this many times in the beginning.
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That is a prepositional phrase that tells us about when this is happening.
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This is happening in the beginning.
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It tells us what we are about to read happened at a certain place and a certain time, and it sets the stage in our minds to comprehend a bit of the magnitude of what's being discussed.
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As we previously stated, this is not only the beginning of the Bible, this is not only the beginning of Genesis, this is the beginning of everything.
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The only thing that pre-exists this point that we know of is the triune God.
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The only thing that pre-exists the words in the beginning is God Himself.
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And so this statement, in the beginning, has in it an important function in our minds because this lets us know this is the beginning of everything.
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And it says in the beginning, God.
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And by the way, we should always remember that God is the main character of the Bible.
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Now when I say character, I even have to step back and say, Keith, don't say that word.
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Because when you say the word character, you think something like a fictional character.
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But God is not a fictional character, but God is the main person that the Bible is about.
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The Bible is not about me.
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The Bible is not about you.
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The Bible is about God.
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Now when we say God, we're talking about the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
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But that's who the Bible is about.
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In fact, if you read Genesis 1.1, and you read all the way to the end of the chapter, you'll see it's all about God.
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And God did this, and God did this, and God said that, and God said this, and God, and God, God, God, God, God.
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And this sets the stage for the whole Bible.
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Because the whole Bible is about God.
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People ask sometimes, why is there so much left out of the Bible? I say, well, first of all, there's nothing left out of the Bible that God intended to be there.
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But remember this, the Bible is not intended to be a history textbook of the whole world, and all the different types of places and beings.
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The Bible is revelation history.
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It's God's history.
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In fact, you've probably heard it said it's His story.
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That's why we call it history.
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It's about God.
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In the beginning, God.
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And then the next word is the verb, created.
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This is an action done by God alone.
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He created.
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And the next two words, the heavens and the earth, these are the objects of the verb.
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This is what He created.
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Now, I want to mention something, and please don't get confused.
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I keep looking for my markers.
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In Genesis 1, 1, I believe we have a complete thought.
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In Genesis 1, 2 and following, I believe we have the expression of that thought stretched out.
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And then in chapters 2 and 3, we have it even more fleshed out.
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I'm not saying there's three creation stories.
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What I'm saying is that Genesis 1, 1 is a thought by itself.
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Because the phrase, heavens and earth, means everything.
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But we're going to see in a moment that God didn't create everything all at once, but He created in stages.
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He begins with a formless and void earth.
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And then He establishes that form.
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And then He fills the form.
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And then in making that, He makes everything else.
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So there are stages that we're going to walk through.
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But Genesis 1, 1 isn't concerned with the stages.
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Genesis 1, 1 is not about production.
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It's about proclamation.
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Like if I said, in 1990, Mike built his dream house.
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Well, Mike didn't build his dream house in 1990, but you understand.
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If I said that, I wouldn't be talking about how it was done.
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I would be talking about that it was done.
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So in Genesis 1, 1, when it says, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, that statement stands on its own.
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Because what it's saying is in the beginning, everything was created by God.
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The term heavens and earth is a lot like when I say head to toe, or from start to finish.
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It's a type of language which means to encompass the whole.
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In the beginning, God created everything.
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And that's what that means.
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Now, verse 2 begins the how.
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Verse 2 begins the next section.
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We've seen the proclamation.
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Now we're going to see the explanation.
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And this begins in verse 2.
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Verse 2 says, the earth was without form and void.
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Now, before we go any further, I want to make mention.
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Some of you may have been exposed in the past to something called the gap theory.
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The gap theory says that between chapter 1, verse 1, and chapter 2, or sorry, chapter 1, verse 2, there is a gap of time.
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And there's an entire history of angelic beings and the fall of Satan and all of these things which occurred in that gap.
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I'm going to talk more about that next week when I get to the creation days and why I don't believe in the gap.
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In fact, I even went and listened to a guy who believes in it because I wanted to see if he could convince me.
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He did not.
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His arguments were not good.
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And I don't mean that to be ugly.
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It just wasn't good arguments.
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His arguments were all based on conjecture, not from the text.
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And so I don't believe in the gap.
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But there are those who believe there's a gap.
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We'll talk about that later.
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But if you have been exposed to that, the reason why I'm not mentioning it is because I don't believe it.
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But I did mention it.
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So anyway, so Genesis 1, 2 says this.
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The earth was without form and void.
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Now, the Hebrew here is actually a really interesting phrase.
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And it's tohu vabohu.
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And I just think that sounds really funny.
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It sounds neat.
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It's got a nice.
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And I think and I believe that the intention of the writing is that it would sound just the way we think it should sound and that it's alliterative.
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The Bible is often written in a way that's easy to remember, right? So like if we were doing this in English, we might say something like vacant and void or void and vacant because we would use the first letter.
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We call that alliteration.
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Well, in Hebrew, the rhyming of tohu vabohu is an alliteration.
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And it's intended to remind us and tell us something about this text.
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It says in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.
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That's the proclamation.
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Now, let's go back and say, OK, but what was it like when he did it at the beginning? There was this earth and it was tohu vabohu.
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It was it was.
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As the text is telling us, without form and void.
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Now, let's talk about those two statements.
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What does it mean to be without form? Well, I am I'm at a loss to describe it, because if I said to you something was without form, we often think, well, you think of like a ball of clay that a potter has thrown onto the wheel and it's just sort of there.
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But it doesn't have any form.
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That's really the best description that I've been able in my mind to come up with.
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But I'm not even sure that really describes it, because what I see here is I see all of the elemental necessities of life and earth brought together, but not yet separated into the parts that are necessary.
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It's all together, but it's not yet made into how it needs to be for life.
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It's as if God said, OK, we're going to bring the soup together.
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And again, please don't think I'm being silly.
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He's going to bring the soup together before we separate out the parts.
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And everything here is there and everything that's necessary is there.
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And it's without form.
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That means it doesn't have any type of shape or mass or place that's giving it something that we would look at and understand.
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And it's void.
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That word void means it's vacant, means there's no life.
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There's nothing and no one there.
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It's just a mass of stuff.
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I can't get a better word.
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It's just stuff.
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And it's ready to be brought into being.
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Now, I want to mention something.
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By the way, just to quote a couple of commentators on this.
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Charles Ellicott says this.
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He says it expresses here the state of primeval matter immediately after creation.
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When is yet there was no cohesion between the separate particles.
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It was just there.
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Joseph Benson says this.
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It was without order, beauty or even use.
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It was just there.
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God had brought it all together to make what he was going to make.
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Now, this is setting the stage for the rest of the chapter.
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This is why I want to use the whiteboard today.
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Because what we're going to see is right now, we see that it's formless and void.
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I mean, I said void means vacant, right? And what we're going to see days one to three is going to give form to the formless, right? So you're going to see form.
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What do we see? Day one, he forms the light.
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Day two, he forms the expanse in the heavens and the waters below.
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So you got waters below and waters above.
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Well, I did that backwards.
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Waters above and waters below.
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Then you get to day three and there's the forming of the land, right? So one through three, you get form out of formless.
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Days four through six, you get filling out of void, out of the nothingness.
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Day one, there's light.
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Day four, you get the light bearers, the sun, the moon and the stars.
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Day two, you have air and sea.
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Day five, you get birds and fish to fill the air and the sea.
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Day three, you get the land.
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Day six, you get the people and the beasts that live on the land.
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So you see the function.
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It's like we're going to form it on these first three days.
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We're going to fill it because it was formless and empty.
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Now it's formed and full.
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So that's the expression.
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That's the whole chapter right in this verse.
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That which was formless, that which is vacant and six days is going to be formed and full.
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OK, so we're going to go from tohu vabohu to formed and filled.
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Now, I want to make mention of something, because when we talk about this, there are those who want to question those days I mentioned last week.
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I believe the days are 24 hour literal days.
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But there are those who have differences of opinion.
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And while I am confirmed in what I believe and teach and our elders are confirmed in the days.
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If you come in and have a different idea, we're not going to excommunicate you from the church.
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But we will say this is what we teach because we believe it's what the text clearly says.
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And next week, when we begin to look at the days, I'll explain more as to why.
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Why do we hold to that? Why is that important to us? Why does it matter? Because that affects a lot of things.
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That not only affects how you think the world was created.
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It also affects when you think the world was created.
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Because if you think the world was created in six literal days, you probably don't think it's as old as many people would have you believe.
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That we're not talking about millions and billions, but thousands of years.
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So that's something to consider.
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And again, that's going to come in the weeks ahead.
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But what did we say last week about creation? Creation is a miracle.
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God doesn't need any time to create a miracle.
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God doesn't need any time.
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He didn't need to wait for those grapes to ferment to become the wine in those six water pots when he created the wine from the water.
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Neither does he need to wait any time at all when he's creating the world on those six days.
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So just something to think about.
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All right.
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So we see here the earth was formless and void.
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And now in this verse two, we have the introduction of something else.
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It says darkness was over the face of the deep.
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Darkness is an important concept.
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Darkness is not really a thing.
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Darkness is the absence of a thing.
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Light is a thing.
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But darkness is when you take the light away or you don't introduce the light.
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So darkness is what we wouldn't call.
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We wouldn't call darkness an addition.
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We would say darkness is a privation.
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It's holding back something.
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It says darkness was over the face of the deep.
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And our elders actually had a good conversation.
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Mike and I had a good conversation on the phone when we talked about it again Wednesday night.
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Andy and I were here.
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We talked a little bit about it.
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Because one of the questions is, if God is light, why was there darkness ever? That's a good question.
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That's a good theological question.
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If God is light, why was there darkness? And as I thought about it, I said that the best answer that I can come up with, and I don't know that it's a perfect answer, but I'll tell you what I think is this.
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God, even though he is intricately connected with his creation as its creator, God is not in creation as the pantheists would believe.
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That God is like God is in the tree.
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God is in the earth.
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God is in the mountain.
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God is over his creation.
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And that's why I believe that it takes the introduction of his light to give the light.
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So that's why at this point there's still darkness.
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There's formlessness and there's darkness.
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And something else we note here, there is at least one element that is formed.
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Water.
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The first element that's fully formed.
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And in this sense, we could begin to get an idea in our mind that it should be a globe of some sort, that it's brought together because there's the deep.
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And you say, well, the deep what? Well, the next verse tells us the deep what? Because it says darkness was over the face of the deep.
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And you say, well, deep what? Is it deep sludge? Is it primordial ooze? Is it lava? Is it? What is it? Well, the Bible doesn't make us have to wonder.
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It says in the very next verse, and the spirit of God, and remember a few sermons back, we talked about the spirit of God, third person of the Trinity, and the fact that the Trinity is mentioned right here as the spirit of God is hovering.
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And it says he is hovering over the waters.
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And this is a parallelism to the deep, I believe, because it says darkness is over the face of the deep, the spirit is over the face of the waters.
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And if we go to Proverbs and other places like that, anytime you have that kind of language right next to each other, that's typically a parallelism.
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So you use one to interpret the other.
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And so I would say the deep here refers to the deep water.
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And so the spirit of God is over the waters as it were.
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And I want to, you don't have to go here, but just listen to this verse.
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Deuteronomy 32, 11.
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Like an eagle that stirs up its nest, that flutters over its young, spreading out its wings, catching them, bearing them on its pinions.
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You say, what in the world does that have to do with anything? The language used there, the eagle stirring up the nest and fluttering its wings over its nest, what we would call brooding.
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That's the same language that's used in Genesis one, two of what the spirit is doing.
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The spirit is there as if.
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And what's one of the symbols of the Holy Spirit in the New Testament? The dove, right? A bird, right? So the spirit is sort of envisioning this idea.
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You've got this sort of massless body of water, this not massless, formless body of water that's just there.
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And the spirit is now there and he's brooding.
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He's preparing it for what's about to happen.
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And what's about to happen is pretty cataclysmic.
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All of the amazing things that are about to, in six days, it's going to go from nothing to something.
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It's going to become an amazing place in just 144 hours, right? And all of this because the Spirit of God is there, hovering, preparing.
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I can't help but to note what I mentioned a few weeks ago, how the Spirit of God comes onto our dead heart and He gives us new life.
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That's the picture of the Spirit of God hovering over that darkness, just preparing it for what's about to happen.
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And what is the next thing that happens? Let there be light.
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Now, before we go to the light, I want to stop for a moment and I want to talk about what I mentioned earlier.
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There are those who believe that Moses is borrowing from ancient pagan understandings of creation.
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I'll give you a few examples of why people believe this.
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The ancient Chaldeans, in the writings that we have been able to unearth through archaeology and other types of study, they believed that Tiamat, which was their word for the sea, was the producing mother of all things, including the heavens.
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And so they would say Tiamat is their creative mother, almost like the modern would say Mother Earth, right? And so some people say, well, here, Moses is stealing from that view because he says the first thing is water, right? And so because Moses says the darkness was over the face of the deep and the spirit of God was over the face of the water, the Babylonians, in their legend, they state something similar.
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They say there was an abyss of water and that in that water were these hideous creatures and they were presided over by a woman named Amorosa and out of her was created all things.
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So you see how they would say, see what they would say is Moses is comparing the spirit to that Amorosa, I think I'm saying it wrong, Amorosa, and that she's the spirit of God.
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The Egyptians believe that the origin of the universe became when the heavens and earth were blended together and afterwards the elements separated and the air began to move and some even mention a spirit in the chaos.
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Sounds sort of like Moses's writings.
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And where did Moses spend his first 40 years? In Egypt, right? So the argument is, you know, Moses is just really, he's just adapting this from Egyptian culture or maybe what he had learned about Chaldean culture or maybe what he'd learned from ancient Babylonian culture and he's just sort of making a hodgepodge.
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And then there's the ancient Indian myth, not Native American Indian, but the Indian country, India, and they believe that there was water and that it was the seed of life and out of that water came an egg and from that egg there was issued Brahma.
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Brahma who became the creator of all things.
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So you see how water sort of plays an intricate part in all these creation narratives.
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And so people are saying, see Moses, he's not giving any kind of a new account.
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He's just sort of creating a hodgepodge of all these various ideas.
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So how would we respond to something like that? Well, some say Moses is using the language of the earth forming from water because that was the common belief and he could connect with people that way.
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Other people say he uses this language because that's what they already believed and so he knew the people had spent all that time in Egypt, all the Israelites had spent all that time in Egypt, so they already believed that and so he could get them to understand it that way.
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But the problem with all of this is the assumption that Moses isn't receiving this from God.
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You understand the problem? Is if we start to say, well, Moses is picking a little bit from here and Moses is picking a little bit from there and Moses is picking a little bit from that one what we're saying is that this isn't revelation.
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This is interpretation.
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That Moses is simply giving us his interpretation of the creation of the world and he's doing so based on what he was taught when he was in Egypt and all the histories that he's heard and that's what he's doing and really there's no no in the flood.
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That was the epic of Gilgamesh and he got that from that and really all these stories are just Moses hearing from people and creating a narrative for his people, the Israelites.
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There's a problem with that.
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If you go over to the New Testament and you read the words of Peter, Peter says this, no prophecy of scripture comes by one's own interpretation, but holy men spoke as they were carried along by the spirit of God.
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Moses is not giving us the third grade history lesson from his Egyptian class when he was a boy in Egypt.
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Moses is giving us revelation from God and God is saying this is how I did it.
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The difference between our stories and the Egyptian story, the difference between our story and the Chaldean story and the Babylonian story and our story and the Indian story, it's very simple.
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Ours is true and I know it sounds, can I make it any simpler? This is revelation from Almighty God and the fact that they're close when they talk about the water doesn't say anything except to the fact that most people understand that water is an element that is necessary for life and the idea that they came up with a creation story that involved water isn't really that big of a stretch of the imagination because most people for recorded history have understood that water is necessary for life.
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So there's really no reason to think that Moses is picking and pulling from all these places.
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We have revelation from God and God said this, remember Moses wasn't there.
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Moses is writing what God tells him to write.
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Moses wasn't there at the beginning.
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I don't know how this happened.
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I've sort of thought in my mind sometimes did God like let Moses sort of see it in his eyes so he could write it or did he just say this is what it is? Whatever it is.
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I can't imagine he had a big like HD screen TV like this is what it looked like.
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I don't think that's how it happened but he told him.
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It was formless.
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It was void.
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Darkness was over the face of the deep.
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There was no light.
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It was just this mass and then I spoke, God again talking to Moses, then I spoke and said, let there be light.
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And that brings us to verse three.
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It says God spoke or he said, let there be light and there was light into the dark mass of elemental formlessness, which we could assume was the shape of a globe only because of our understanding of how the earth is now.
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We likely it was a globe at that point, a globe of water likely at that point, probably even turning as it does now.
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But there was light cast in the darkness by divine command.
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And here's the wonderful thing that I just find fascinating.
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There wasn't a sun and there wasn't a moon and there weren't any stars.
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Look at verse 16.
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Just turn in your down to verse 16 and God made two great lights.
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The greater light to rule the day, the lesser light to rule the night and the stars.
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And God set them in the expanse of the heaven to give light on the earth, to rule over the day and over the night and to separate the light from the darkness.
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And God saw that it was good.
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And there was evening and there was morning the fourth day.
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Notice the sun and the moon and the stars don't come until day four.
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Now people with a geological, a science geology background will scoff at that.
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People with an astrophysicists background will laugh you out of the room.
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If you say, hey, I think the earth came first.
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Because in naturalistic history, you will hear that first there was nothing and then there were an explosion of nothing.
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And out of that explosion of nothing came everything.
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And out of that were formed all of these universes.
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And in these universes, there were, there are galaxies rather within the universe.
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There were these galaxies and within these galaxies, hot balls of gas began to form and cool.
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And some of them cooled to a point where they could actually begin to be planets.
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And they began to shape themselves as they spun around in the galaxy that they were in as they traveled around the stars that they were in.
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And one of those miraculously formed just in the right spot to be able to sustain advanced life.
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And we call that place earth.
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But notice in that paradigm that I just gave, notice the earth is the end of the story.
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Because what came first, the explosion.
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And after that, the universe and then the galaxies and then the stars, which would be suns.
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And then out of those suns arose, around those suns arose the planets.
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And then the moons came out of that.
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And so the one I think we would all agree on is the moon came after the earth.
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But everything else, the argument is everything else came first, the earth.
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Because if you ask, how old is the universe? 13 point some odd billion years.
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How old is the earth? 4.5 billion years.
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In case you're bad at math, because I really am.
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13.5 is longer than 4.5.
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So the idea of the universe is much older than the earth.
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But according to this and people say, well, pastor, you're just not thinking of this scientifically.
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We know science proves that the universe is older than the earth.
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Now, when we talk about the gap theory next week, I'm going to talk about there are some people who are Christians who believe the universe is older than the earth.
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But my reading of the narrative here is very simple.
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The earth was formed first.
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Does that agree with modern scientific understanding? No, and I'm OK with that.
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If I get to heaven and God tells me I was wrong about this, it's not going to affect my relationship with Jesus Christ.
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But if I introduce into the text something that's not there, that's my wrong.
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So I'm just going to take the text as it is.
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And the text tells me the earth was formless and void.
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Darkness is over the face of deep.
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God said, let there be light.
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But there's no sun yet because it doesn't come until day four.
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So how do I understand the light? How do I understand the light? Well, the light can exist without a light bearer.
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If the light source is produced by God.
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I mean, that should be simple enough.
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If God says, let there be light and he's the source, then that doesn't need a light bearer, a luminary.
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It doesn't need God.
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You know, I need these lights.
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I need the lights in my house because I can't just say, let there be light.
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But understand that in the narrative, light is preceding the luminaries so that we might understand that the light itself is coming from God.
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And you say, well, how do you, how do you arrive at that conclusion? Well, if you find your way over to Revelation 21, 23, you'll notice that it says in the new Jerusalem, there is no need of a sun or a moon for the glory of God gives it its light and its lamp is the lamb.
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So somebody says, where's the light coming from? God.
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And here's the beauty of this.
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I want to make a good and interesting point.
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When God said, let there be light and there was light and it was good.
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I think the whole earth was lit up and that's something the sun can't do because the sun is a single point of light reference.
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Therefore, we have day and night because the sun's over here and the earth's over here and whatever's on this side of the earth can't get the light.
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But I think when God said, let there be light, I think it was light everywhere because it was the light of God.
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And therefore, his entire earth is at that moment encompassed in the light.
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And then we see the next verse, which says, and God saw the light was good.
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And then he separated the light from darkness.
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See, because at the moment he created, the light was fully encompassing.
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And then he said, okay, now we're going to do something.
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We're going to create the very first boundary marker.
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By the way, boundary markers will come up again.
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Let the firmament in the sky make a boundary between the firmament below.
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Let the waters make a boundary with the land.
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There's going to be a boundary and God begins to establish these boundaries.
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But the first boundary he sets is between light and dark.
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Why? Because he's about to establish something called a day.
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And he's going to use that day as the mark for each of his creative movements.
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It was evening, it was morning, the first day.
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It was evening, it was morning, the second day.
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He's going to use this separation, this boundary marker to mark the rest of his life.
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Of the week.
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All right.
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So now I want to show you that we've looked at verses 1 to 4.
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Oh, by the way, one last thing in verse 4.
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He said the light was good.
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Wouldn't you agree with God at this point that light is good? You realize how important light is just for your very existence? You know, there are animals that live where they can never see the light.
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There are animals that live so far down in the water of the ocean that they're basically blind.
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They have to use everything from feeling and sonar and different types of things.
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But they don't have any sight because the sun doesn't penetrate, the light doesn't penetrate that deep.
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Thank God you don't live there.
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Thank God, that's not what God created for us.
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God created us a world that we can imbibe the beauty through our eyes.
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We can take it in through our senses.
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We can feel the sun on us as we walk outside.
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And it's almost like our bodies are drinking in energy because they are.
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We're drinking in that vitamin D.
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We're getting that energy.
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And this is a good thing and God says it is good.
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And I tell you, one of the things I look forward to preaching over the next several weeks is how many times God says it's good.
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It's good.
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And why is it good? Because it pleases Him.
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It glorifies Him.
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God is glorified and everything that He does is good.
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It's only until man comes in and brings in that sin that anything becomes bad.
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People ask all the time, why is there evil in the world? Why is there evil in the universe if God is so good? I said, go back to Genesis 1 and look at the way He made it and how we messed it up.
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He is good and that which He creates is good.
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And light was good.
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Through it, we see everything else.
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That's the analogy to what I want us to go to now.
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Because I just want to show you a few things in the New Testament now that we've looked at these four verses.
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And we're going to draw to a close relatively quickly.
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But I want to show you an analogy.
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Because not only is light good, later, light is used as the analogy of good.
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And darkness is used as the analogy of bad.
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Now, I want to say this.
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I don't think the earth was bad when it was dark and formless and void.
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In the sense that I don't think God created an evil earth that He had to fix.
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I think it was part of the creation process that it was dark and then He made light.
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But the analogy is formless, void, useless, dead.
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And God brings light and then it becomes alive.
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The analogy in the New Testament is spiritual darkness, spiritual deadness, spiritual separation from God.
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And then God brings the light of Christ into the darkened heart and it becomes alive.
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And now we are able to see.
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What did Jesus say? Unless a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.
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The light has to be brought on.
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Let's look at a few verses just quickly.
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Turn over to John chapter 8.
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And look at verse 12.
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Again, Jesus spoke to them saying, I am the light of the world.
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Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.
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Light here.
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Jesus says, I am the light.
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And if you're not in me, you're in darkness.
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There's only two ways.
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You're either in the light or you're in the darkness.
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There ain't no shade.
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Hear that again.
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There ain't no shade.
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I know that's bad English, but it's good theology.
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There is no middle ground.
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You are either in the light or you're in the darkness.
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John 3 was already read this morning by brother Jerry.
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He read our opening scripture.
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And this is the judgment.
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Light has come into the world and people love the darkness.
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Do you realize people love the darkness? Do you know why people love darkness? Because it's where their sin resides.
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In the darkness of the heart, even in the darkness of life, where do we hide our sins? Behind the light, behind the closed doors, in the bedrooms, in the closets, under the mattresses, under those hidden internet windows.
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We hide it behind something because we don't want it exposed to the light.
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You go to the areas of town where there are places of ill repute and strip clubs and places of bars.
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And these places may be lit up with neon signs, but there's darkness all around.
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It's darkness, spiritual darkness.
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It's physical darkness.
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It's darkness all around.
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And Jesus said, the light has come into the world and people love the darkness rather than the light.
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Turn one other place with me.
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And I want to show you 2 Corinthians 4, 6.
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Because 2 Corinthians 4, 6, Paul uses creation, the narrative we've been studying, and he uses it as an analogy for our own salvation.
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And I want you to hear this, 2 Corinthians 4, 6.
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For God who said, let light shine out of darkness.
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Now stop right there.
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What's he referring to? He's referring to Genesis 1, 3.
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And God said, let there be light.
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He's saying it a little differently, but he's saying, he's referencing the God who said, let light shine out of darkness has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
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What is Paul saying here? What he is saying is, when we look at the first four verses of Genesis and we see the earth, which was tohu vabohu, formless and void, and we see that darkness, and then we see God speaking into the darkness and bringing light.
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He says, now we look at ourselves and we can say this, the same God who said, let light shine into darkness.
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Now has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
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And might I add something? This passage does explain in a sense our regeneration, but there's more to this passage than that.
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If you read 2 Corinthians 4, 6 in its context, it's not just about regeneration and our getting the light, but it's about our being the light.
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It's about the light of Christ showing in our hearts.
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It's about the light of Christ, not only coming in, penetrating, and giving light to our darkness, but it's that we, because of that, become the light of Christ.
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You are the light of the world.
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Isn't that what Jesus said? Didn't He say we are the light of the world? Didn't He say that we are supposed to be the ones that go out and not hide our light under a bushel, but that we are to be the ones who, because of the light within us, the light shows out of us.
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I'm so afraid that we become so fascinated with our own salvation and how God changed us, but we don't realize it.
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We don't get at all fascinated with how God can use us to save others.
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That God, that we forget that that light that's in us isn't supposed to stay here, but that it's supposed to shine out.
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The God who spoke the light into the world at the beginning spoke light into your heart, and now He has called you to be a bearer of that light.
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He's called you to be an ambassador for Christ.
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You've been given something.
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You've been given light.
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You've been told to go into a dark world and let your light shine in the darkness.
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May it be, may it be that God would so impress upon all of us who believe in Him of our duty to be lights in a dark world.
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Let us pray.
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Father, I thank you.
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I thank you, Lord, that you have saved and you continue to save.
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And I pray, Lord, and I thank you that you brought light into my dead soul.
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I thank you that you brought light into the dead souls of so many that are here, that you have given light and life.
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And I thank you, Lord, that your word tells us that you are light and in you is no darkness at all.
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And I pray, O God, that when we consider all that that means, that we would be moved in our hearts to want to share the light of Christ with everyone we come in contact with, that we would be moved to truly be the light of the world.
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May it be, Father.
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May it be for your name and for your sake.
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In Christ's name, Amen.
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Amen.