The Bible in 16 Verses: 1. Creation: Genesis 1:31

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Okay, so we're going to start a new series this morning and it's called the whole Bible in 16 verses.

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Now because of, well I won't say who, but because of human nature, these 16 verses are not an alternative to the

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Bible. You don't just read these 16 verses and say I got it done, alright? This is part of the

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Bible, right? So we're going to go through these verses, this is an outline of everything. So obviously, we're going to start with the

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Old Testament and the Old Testament is a time is coming, a time of the Messiah, we're waiting for the

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Messiah, right? Next we're going to go through human beings, the fall, redemption promised,

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Abraham, Judah the king, the Passover lamb, King David, the suffering servant, the resurrection promised, and the new creation.

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Today we're going to hit creation, Genesis 1 .31. The second half of the series is going to be the

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New Testament, which is the time has come, what God promised in the Old Covenant has now been made real in the

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New. So we're going to see the fulfillment of that, we're going to see the cross, the resurrection, justification, and glory.

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So our last study was the 10 essentials, right? Our current study is the

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Bible in 16 verses. So my question for you this morning is, what's the difference between the study we went through and this upcoming study that we're going to have?

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Anybody want to venture a guess? No one.

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Did you get your coffee? Anybody awake? Okay. Have your souls been raptured because of the eclipse?

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Is everybody ready for that? Okay. Yes, Annette. That's a very good synopsis.

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Yes, Pastor Chris? Boy, I tell you, this is why, this is why he's an elder, right?

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It's going to be the difference between systematic theology and biblical theology. Thank you.

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Because, let's just go through this real quick. Systematic theology is the study of the Bible's teaching in which we try to categorize and then summarize what the

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Bible as a whole teaches about certain kinds of topics. So if you remember, when we went through the

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Ten Essentials series, we went through Christology, the study of Christ, Harmardiology, the study of sin,

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Soteriology, the study of salvation. So what a systematic theology does, it takes all of the verses about one particular topic and systematizes them, puts them, condenses them so we can go through and see what the

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Bible means about a certain topic. Systematic biblical theology, as described by Gerhardus Vos, studies the

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Bible with a focus on its history. In other words, the progression of revelation and redemption as the story unfolds.

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Where systematic theology is topically organized, biblical theology is historically organized.

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That's why we're starting at Genesis. It looks at the progress of God's work and his revelation through time.

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In addition, biblical theology, more broadly conceived, can study the themes that are distinct to a particular book of the

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Bible or to books written by a single human author. In other words, when we go through Paul's epistles or his letter to Timothy and Titus, those are specific topics.

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He's talking about becoming an elder and a deacon in 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus. So we can look at that and say that's a theme that we're looking at.

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So systematic theology is topical. It's narrower. It's what we would call micro, whereas the biblical theology is macro.

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It's an overview of everything. So in systematic theology, we learn divine facts.

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In biblical theology, we learn divine acts. You like that alliteration? See, I came up with that just for you.

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All right, so biblical theology is concerned more with the storyline than the bottom line.

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Now, why is this important? Can you think of an illustration of why just knowing certain facts systematically without knowing the entire picture, why that would be detrimental?

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Can't see the forest for the trees, right? Yes. Applied theology, practical theology, how it works out.

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Think about this. In our American legal system, you have two sides. Both present the same set of facts.

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Both come to different conclusions. He's innocent. He's guilty. That's why we need biblical theology.

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We need to see how all the things that we systematized, all the doctrines that we had laid out, fit into the progress of redemptive history.

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Who God is? Why does he do certain things that he does? Why does he choose to save mankind?

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Why does he choose to exercise justice towards certain people and mercy towards others?

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That's what we're going to learn through the biblical theology. So, at their best, biblical theology and systematic theology interact and help to deepen one another.

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My personal opinion is you cannot do one without the other. You need both, okay?

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So, if you have facts without a metanarrative, without the storyline of reality, all you have is facts and you're going to come to wrong conclusions.

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You need to put these facts together in order to see the full scope of what

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God's doing. Any questions? Does that make sense to everyone? Okay. So, we're going to do biblical theology now, whereas previously we did systematic theology.

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Okay. So, biblical theology and worldview. There's four events that shape our worldview through the scriptures.

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Anybody want to take a guess at what those four events are? Great. Creation.

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Thank you. What happens right after the creation? The fall. What happens right after the fall?

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Before that, what happens to Adam and Eve? They're redeemed.

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They're redeemed, right, and then ultimately restored. So, what we see is the ongoing cycle of creation, fall, redemption, restoration.

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This is basically the storyline of the Bible. If you were, let's say, using an analogy like a play, these would be the four acts.

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Creation, fall, redemption, restoration. That forms the storyline, the basis of what the

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Bible is all about. Next, there's five main components, okay?

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I'll just give you these. God, man, Jesus, cross, resurrection.

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We start with God. Why? The Bible starts with God.

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In the beginning, God. That's, again, this is why systematically we can learn all we want about theology proper, but if we don't put

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God first and we put man first, we're going to come to a very different conclusion as to what the

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Bible means. So, we put God first because the Bible puts God first. In the beginning, God.

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That it starts with him, right? After God comes man. God creates and he creates man as the pinnacle of his creation.

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Fast forward, it comes to Jesus. Jesus is the one who's going to be the

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God -man, right? Die on the cross, take our sins upon him, be buried, raised from the dead, right?

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That's at the cross, and then he's resurrected from the dead, which is what we celebrated last week, the resurrection from the dead.

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So these main components, God, man, Jesus, cross, resurrection, are what we're going to see.

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Again, it's going to be a reoccurring theme throughout all history. And why did I put Jesus in red?

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He's the center of everything. He is what the Old Testament points to, points forward to.

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He is what the New Testament points back at. He is the centerpiece of the

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Bible, right? What happens is lots of people put themselves in the middle of the

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Bible, right? We've heard this over and over, you're not David, right? Give him five chances with five stones, you're going to miss every time.

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You need Jesus. He's going to take one stone, he's going to crush the giant on your behalf. You're not going to conquer

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Goliath, he's going to conquer Goliath. And when you're in union with him, his victory is your victory.

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If it's left up to you, what happens if you miss? God gives us a guarantee in Christ, very important.

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So here are the main themes, covenant, kingdom, and temple. God deals with mankind covenantally.

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God does not deal with mankind in any other way except for in covenant. Okay, if you're going to come to the men's breakfast next

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Saturday, which I recommend you do, we are going to go through covenants and what that means. So God deals with mankind covenantally.

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He also deals with the world as a kingdom. Now, you're going to hear this in a couple of minutes, but he's the king, and what does

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Dom represent? Domain, right?

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So the word kingdom, what should pop into your mind is there's a king, and the entire world is his domain.

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So when we say kingdom, it's God and his domain. And then temple,

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God sets up the temple in the Old Testament sacrificial system, even before that, okay, and then he sets up a temple in the

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New Testament, which we will get to at a future time. Okay, so now, if you had the opportunity to describe what the

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Bible is in one pithy sentence, what would it be? Give me some thoughts.

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Go get more coffee. Give me the...what's the story of the

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Bible in one sentence? That sounds good, yes?

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What else? All right, God's plan, redemptive history.

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Okay, I like this particular sentence. Here it is. Through Jesus, God is reconciling everything that sin has ruined.

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Through Jesus, God is reconciling everything that sin has ruined or broken. All right, so from beginning to end,

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God's centerpiece, Christ, he's going to reconcile the entire world. That's why the whole

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Bible is about him. He's the one that reconciles us to God. We don't reconcile ourselves to God.

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We don't do enough good things to reconcile ourselves to God. In fact, we've eliminated ourself as a possible reconciler.

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We've sinned over and over and over. Did you have a question, Pierre? Right, exactly, they do.

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Now, the events, okay, we're going to see play out like there's decreation and recreation, right?

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So you'll see not a brand new creation until we get to the New Testament, then Jesus ushers in the new creation.

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But you're going to see glimpses of these, in fact, through the Exodus. Yes, Annette? Sure. It's very important that we recognize this is biblical theology, but this is also our worldview.

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Worldview is a view of the world, okay, and everyone has a worldview.

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Everyone, but not everyone, has the same lenses, okay? We put the

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Bible on. Those are our lenses through which we view the world. Through which we view the world,

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I'm talking like a Bronx kid. Through which we view the world, okay, and we see everything.

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We filter it through the scriptures. When you don't have the scriptures, let's say you're a big science guy, and you don't believe the

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Bible. You're going to filter everything through a scientific lens. I'm going back and forth with atheists online right now who are scientists, and they're not coming to the same conclusions.

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They're saying, well, God loves you so much that he's going to torture you in hell forever. How do you respond?

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Okay, Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao Tse Tung, they get away with everything they've done. Do whatever you want then.

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Who cares, right? They don't see the flip side. You look at things through the biblical world, you understand there's true right and wrong, there's real justice, there's real consequences for evil.

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In fact, that's one of the things that Christopher Hitchens, he's constantly when he was alive, he says, name one thing that you can say as a

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Christian that I can't say as an atheist. And nobody really answered him. And I'm thinking in my head, there's an ultimate consequence for evil.

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I can say that, you can't. You believe that when you're dead, you're dead, don't exist anymore.

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If you have a soul, you're going to live on, and there are going to be ultimate consequences for evil. That's why we need

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Jesus, the centerpiece of theology. In fact, the scriptures are the testimony of Jesus Christ.

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Every single person in here who has come to the Lord, come to know the Lord, has a testimony.

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You say what you were like before, you come to a place in your life where, oh my goodness, God opens your eyes, your ears, changes your heart, now your life is changed.

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You have a testimony. The Bible is the testimony of Jesus Christ. Not that he was unsaved and then saved.

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This is the story of Jesus. That's why it's important to keep him in the center and not you.

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The human propensity is to put us in the midst of the story. Oh, we're going to conquer the giant.

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You're not. You're not. Jesus is. You're in union with him. You have it all.

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Eyes in the middle of pride, right? If you put yourself in the middle of there, we would be studying meology rather than theology.

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That would be narcissus, not exegesis, right? His story, history, right?

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All right, so real quick, I just want to go through the structure of the Bible with everyone. Because I want everybody to know what we're talking about.

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First, the Bible, the scriptures, consist of 66 books. When I say books, those could also mean letters or epistles.

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You have 39 books in the Old Testament, which encompass about 4 ,000 years worth of history up to before Jesus came.

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Then you have the New Testament, which is 27 books, and that covers approximately 70 years from the birth of Jesus to the destruction of the temple.

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So all in all, 66 books, 39 in the Old, 27 in the New. It's an incredible book, 66, 39 in the

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Old Testament, 27 in the New. It's written over a period of 1 ,500 years, approximately 1450

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BC to AD 100, encompasses the whole scriptures. It's written by 40 different writers, but only one author.

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Men carried along by the Holy Spirit penned these things for us. So God used human instruments to bring the scriptures to us.

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And they come from various different backgrounds. Some were educated, some were uneducated. When you look at Daniel, he was an educated man.

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Isaiah came from a rich household. When you look at Amos, he was a sheepherder. You know, so you have all different walks of life that God used to bring the scriptures to us.

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He used Luke. Luke was a physician. So you have a doctor writing, right? And some people say, oh, you're going to believe what a sheepherder wrote to you 2, 3, 4, 5 ,000 years ago?

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Say, okay, Luke wasn't a sheepherder, he was a physician, and it wasn't 2, 3, 4, 5 ,000 years ago, okay?

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The scriptures contain events from three different continents, Africa, Asia, and Europe, contains three different languages, okay?

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We have Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. So the Old Testament is written predominantly in Hebrew.

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There are some spots, especially if you understand in Daniel, where they do go Aramaic.

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The New Testament is written predominantly in Greek. Again, there's some Aramaic sentences in there, but those predominantly are the three languages that the scriptures are read in.

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Now, I had this one teacher, not me, a friend of mine had this one teacher who was railing against God in one of the classes that he had in Suffolk County Community College, in fact.

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And the woman says, how could you believe the New Testament? All those things were written in Hebrew.

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You don't even know Hebrew. And he raised his hand, he said, they were written in Greek, not

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Hebrew. Like, if you're going to get the basic facts wrong, good chance you're not even looking into this, okay?

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Okay, so let's start with the Old Testament. This is where...or before, actually.

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Testament is a word that means covenant or promise. That's very important because our book is...our

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Bible is divided into two parts, Old Testament, New Testament. Old promise, new promise.

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Okay, again, the structure of the book, the first 17 books are historical in nature.

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So, if you wanted to read a history of Israel, okay, and God's interaction, you would read that whole first column.

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Column. The next books, he calls a poetical, they're really known as wisdom literature. You have

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Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon. Like, in the slide before, said it was written by kings.

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Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon was written by King Solomon, right? He was a king. So, this is wisdom literature.

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You don't try to read wisdom literature and apply it or read it historically.

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It's not meant to be read like that. They're different genres. When you're reading the scriptures, you have to know, if I'm reading history, this is a narrative, okay?

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When I'm reading poetry or wisdom literature, it's interpreted differently. And then finally, the prophetic books, okay,

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Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, Ezekiel, these are written by prophets. Anybody want to tell me what a real easy definition of a prophet would be or what a prophet's job would be?

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The mouthpiece of God, right? God would speak to the prophet and tell him to speak to his people and say, listen, you're in violation of the covenant.

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If you continue in violation of this covenant, this is what I'm going to do. If you repent and turn back and obey my covenant,

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I'm going to fulfill my promises. But if not, these are going to be the ramifications. So, really, the prophets acted as covenant attorneys.

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They would hear from God and warn the people. The record of God's old covenant with his people is the

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Old Testament, okay? Now we get to the New Testament. Again, testament equals covenant or promise, and we have three divisions in the

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New Testament as well. You have historical, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts.

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And you don't want to take verses out of historical thing and create a doctrine about them, right?

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In the Book of Acts, which is a historical narrative, not normative, it's a narrative, they cast lots to pick the elders.

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Did we do that now? Gosh, no, right? That was part of the narrative. And this is, especially in the

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Book of Acts, you're going to get people who come to different conclusions about speaking in tongues and how that's supposed to be normative when this is out of a narrative, okay?

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When you see that tongues were poured out on the people in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the outer parts of the world, that's exactly what

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Jesus said would happen. He says, go, speak to them in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the outer parts of the world.

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That was the fulfillment of it. Okay. Then you're going to get the Pauline epistles. Some of these are written to churches, others are written directly to individuals, like Timothy.

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He wrote the first one to Timothy, and then he wrote it to his brother, second Timothy. Oh, gosh.

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Come on. All right. And then his other brother, Titus, I'm sorry. Yeah, they were twins.

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The parents ran out of names. Call him Timothy. Somebody's going to come when we call him. All right. The humor.

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And then we have the general epistles. All right. Hebrews, James, first and second Peter, first, second, third, John, Jude, and Revelation.

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Okay. The new covenant is the records of God's new covenant with his church to all of his people, not just Israel, but to all of his people.

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Everybody following along? Any questions up until this point? Okay. So, real quick, the

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Old Testament points forward to Jesus as Messiah. And in the

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Old Testament, we have the Tanakh. Anybody know what the Tanakh represents, the three divisions?

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Okay, real quick. Torah is law. Nevi 'im is the prophets, and the

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Kedavim is the writings. That's where we get the word Tanakh, Torah, Nevi 'im, Kedavim. So, when you hear a

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Jewish person talking about the Tanakh, he's talking about the whole of the Old Testament. When you hear a

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Jewish person talk about the Pentateuch, he's only talking about the first five books of the Bible. Okay.

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So, the Tanakh, the whole of the Old Testament scriptures point forward to Jesus in anticipation of the

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Messiah. So many Jews are still waiting for the Messiah to come. We believe that Jesus is the

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Messiah who has come. And why? Because we have the New Testament, and the New Testament points back at Jesus.

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So, you have the Old Covenant pointing forward towards Jesus. You have the New Covenant, from where we stand in time, pointing back at Jesus.

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That's known as the New Testament. And what we're going to see is the manifestation of Messiah, the proclamation of Messiah, the explanation of Messiah, and the consummation of Messiah.

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Okay. So, we have anticipation, manifestation, proclamation, explanation, and consummation.

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The Gospels give you the manifestation. Jesus is here. This is what he's teaching.

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The proclamation is in the Book of Acts. Okay. This is after Jesus ascended into heaven. Repent, believe on the

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Lord, okay, and you will be saved. What men must do. The explanation, Paul, in his epistles, gives us deep theology.

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All right. And finally, the consummation is the Book of Revelation, where we'll see the ultimate consummation of all things in God's kingdom restored perfectly.

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Okay. Again, what's the focal point? Jesus. Don't forget that. If Jesus is the focal point, he will become your hermeneutic, which is the art and science of biblical interpretation.

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You're going to read the scriptures and see how they either point towards him or about him in some way, shape, or form.

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Okay. So what I want to do is give you a quick timeline. And I'll put this in the link in the comments box.

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So we're going to have creation. Adam's the first man, right? Then we're going to go to Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph.

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Those are known as, and Moses, are known as the patriarchs. Okay. And those six men are found in the

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Book of Genesis. Once we get to Joseph and we get a new pharaoh, Joseph dies, we get a new pharaoh.

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They're exiled into Egypt. This is where Moses comes on the scene. And he takes the

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Israelites, as per by God's direction, out of Egypt. And the squiggly line represents the amount of years it took to get over to the promised land.

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All right. They finally get to the promised land. Now, while they're in the wilderness,

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Moses relays Leviticus numbers in Deuteronomy. That's where those particular books come from.

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Okay. Telling the Jews how an unholy, sinful man can get into the presence of God.

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That's what the Book of Leviticus is all about. Finally, they get into the promised land. You have Joshua, Judges, and Ruth.

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Once God sets up the judges who fail, they constantly have this sin cycle, the

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Israelites cry out to God, we want a king. God gives them Saul.

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Not so good, right? Saul gives rise to David. David gives birth to Solomon.

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So now we have, that's all taken into account in 1 and 2 Samuel. Solomon writes the

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Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Song of Solomon. David, as well as several others, write the Book of Psalms. David's sons,

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Jeroboam and Rehoboam, have a dispute, and now the kingdom splits.

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Okay. Now the kingdom splits. You have the northern kingdom, Israel, north.

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You have Judah in the south. And it's not really just Judah, it's Ephraim, Manasseh, and the tribe of Levi.

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Okay. So, but they're called Judah. This is where we actually get the name Jew. They're Jews, from the tribe of Judah.

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Because these northern tribes eventually get decimated by the Assyrians. And then they're now called the

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Lost Tribes of Israel. Okay. So you have the split, there's a divided kingdom. And this is going to be described in 1 and 2

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Kings and 1 and 2 Chronicles. Anybody want to tell me what the difference between 1 and 2

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Kings and 1 and 2 Chronicles is? Because they read very much alike. So 1 and 2

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Kings is written to show Israel and Judah their faithfulness to God's covenant. First, faithlessness.

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Okay. 1 and 2 Chronicles is written to show Israel and Judah what to do when they come back in the land.

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Okay. How to be faithful. One highlights their unfaithfulness, one highlights what they need to do to get back into the land.

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Okay. So, the northern tribes are decimated. This is where Jonah warns them.

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Hosea warns them. Amos warns them. Assyria comes in, conquers the northern tribes of Israel.

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Now we're left with Judah. Judah's waning. Okay. They're still disobeying God. Jerusalem is destroyed by the

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Babylonians who come in to take over the land that the Assyrians conquered. So Babylon conquers

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Assyria and in doing so, takes the tribes of Judah and disperses them. But then we get to Cyrus and the

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Persians. Okay. And Cyrus has a heart for God's people, by God's sovereignty, and he starts restoring people back to the land.

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This is a really rough summary of it. Again, I'm going to put this up for you in the

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YouTube video. So, while they're in captivity,

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Babylonian captivity, we have Ezra and Nehemiah who want to go back to the land to rebuild the temple and the walls of Jerusalem.

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Cyrus allows them to do that. Okay. Then we get the final prophets, Haggai, Zechariah, Joel, and Malachi, and then that's the end of the

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Old Testament until we get to the New Testament. So, at that point in time,

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Israel was occupied by different nations. You had Persia, Greece, Syria, and Egypt.

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Then it was a period of independence, and then they were taken over by Rome. Okay. So, for our study now, in the first 16 verses, we're predominantly going to be staying in this area,

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Adam, Noah, Abraham from Genesis all the way to 1 and 2 Samuel. That is going to give us a good overview, especially the book of Genesis.

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Everything that happens in Genesis, you're going to see play out throughout the rest of the scriptures. So, pay close attention when you go through the book of Genesis.

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It's going to be very important. Okay. Moving right along. Finally, we get to the first verse.

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Exhale. All right. The time is coming, Old Testament. Creation, Genesis 1 .31, and God saw that he made everything that he made, and behold, it was very good.

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And it was evening, and there was morning the sixth day. I like to use this quote by A .W.

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Toza, what comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us. That's why it's so important that we start with God, because if we do not correctly understand who

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God is, and we distort him in our mind, that is going to affect how we live out our lives.

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Okay. So, Genesis is a book of beginnings. Okay. Our worldview begins with our view of God.

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It begins with the way we think about God. That's going to shape everything, the way we act to other people with regards to our view of God.

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And because of this, we need to get our thoughts about God straight at the beginning of this study. In other words, as we set out to tell the story of the

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Bible, we have to begin with God. He is the author of the scriptures. He's the creator of time.

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He's the creator of space, matter. He's the creator of humanity. He's the creator of life. Most importantly, he is the focal point and the hero of every story we have in the scriptures.

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It's not about man. It's not about you. The Bible is a book with a clear beginning and an end.

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It starts with God and creation. It will end with the renewal of the creation and the beginning of a new order.

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If you aren't familiar with the creation story, let me summarize it real quick. God made everything and everything he made was good.

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Real easy. We don't need to go much further to get to the point. Everything that God creates is good, right?

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It's really important that we remember that because there's a lot of people now, you look out at the world and it's real easy, this isn't good.

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No, no, no. This is good. God's creation is good. In the beginning, there was nothing and God made everything just by speaking.

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He spoke and creation obeyed. It obeyed by coming into being by sprouting every living thing and finally submitting itself to God's sovereign power.

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So real quick, if God spoke and everything came into being, what would you say about this

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God? He's powerful, almighty. This is a

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God who can create ex nihilo, that's Greek for out of nothing, right?

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That's a powerful God. The emphasis in the whole chapter and especially verse 31 is the ease with which

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God spoke the world into being and the harmony that existed between creator and creation, okay?

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So he spoke everything into being and it was all very good. In other words, it was harmonious with God.

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When he had finished making everything, God looked at it and said, it was very good. Notice that God was the one who pronounced the verdict.

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He didn't call in the angels and say, hey, what do you think? Is this good? Is this all right?

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The entire universe came into being because he spoke it into being and he was the only one qualified to evaluate his work, right?

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We don't see the angels coming in and like American Idol, yeah, I'll give him an eight out of ten, this wasn't so bad.

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No, God says everything is very good. So what does that mean?

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The focus at the very beginning is on God, his creation, and his authority over that creation.

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And everything in that creation reflected his nature, good. It was all good.

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Now, you might ask, why did we start at Genesis 131 when we should start at Genesis 1 -1?

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Well, Genesis 131 tells us it's very good. Next week, we're gonna go through humanity, which is the verse before, okay?

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Come on. When we put together God's power to create and his authority to evaluate his creation, we find that God is the sovereign ruler of the universe.

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God's sovereignty at the beginning of creation is very important to understand.

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In other words, God is the king who has the right, he has the power, and he has the authority to rule over his creation.

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How many people today turn that upside down? God answers to us. G -O -D really means genie on demand.

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I rub the lamp, I tell God what I want, and he's my butler. He gets me what I want. It's the exact opposite.

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We are to serve him, he is not here to serve us. Now, he loves us, and he invites us into his creation, into his covenant,

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I should say, okay, and we'll be blessed by doing that. And the king's official's decree over his kingdom is that it is very good.

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This doesn't just mean that it was beautiful or inspiring, though it certainly was and it still is.

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When God said his creation was very good, he was proclaiming that his creation was doing what he wanted it to do.

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In other words, trees were growing the way he designed. Fish were swimming in the sea the way he designed.

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Humans were relating with each other in love with the creation and with their creator, just as God intended.

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So everything that God did in the beginning was in perfect harmony with God and with each other.

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In short, God's kingdom was in perfect harmony with its king. Now you know, verse before this and what we're gonna hit next week, the harmony is disrupted.

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By who? Humanity. Humanity is the one that brings disruption into God's good creation.

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We have to remember, we're not the sovereign ruler. We brought evil into the world, okay?

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God was the one who made it very good. And in spite of all, everything that went wrong,

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God's kingdom still looks to him and depends on him, just as it has from the beginning. But let me ask you something, what else can creation be considered?

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What else thematically that we talked about? One of the themes at the beginning, it was down toward the bottom.

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All right, we'll go through this and you'll see what it is in a minute. So day one, God says, let there be light.

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There was light. He separated the light from the darkness. Then he separated the water from the heavens.

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Day three, he creates land and separates the water from the land. So God's creating things, okay, and then separating things.

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That's real important. Don't you think separation has a lot to play in the story of redemption?

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God's separating things. Those were called days of forming. God formed three spaces.

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Day four, God creates the sun, moon, and the stars to govern the day by light and the night by the light also, the stars.

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He creates birds and sea creatures. And then the pinnacle of his creation is day six, where he creates animals and human beings.

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Those were the days of filling. So God created three spaces, and then each day he fills them.

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Finally, day seven is God's Sabbath, a day of rest or a day of fulfillment.

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Everything that God did and needed, not that he needed to do it, everything that he did that was good, he rests because everything is in harmony and it's fulfilled, okay?

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So in the ancient Near East, when a king wanted to set up a kingdom, he would build, not a kingdom, he would set up a temple, right?

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And he would fill the temple, and then the last thing he would do is put a statue of himself in the temple because he thought he was

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God, right? And what they're doing, they're taking from God's narrative because creation is

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God's temple. Creation, you have the heavens, the earth, and beneath the earth, right?

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And when you look at the tabernacle, the Holy of Holies is at the top. When you look at mountains, anytime

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Moses went to meet God, it was at the top of a mountain, okay? So creation is set up like God's temple because it is

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God's temple. And what does he do? The last thing he does is put Adam and Eve in the temple, not as a statue of him, but of his image.

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We are the image bearers of God, and we are called to take dominion over the world that he's created, okay?

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So the earth is God's temple. Let us go to his dwelling place. Let us worship at his footstool.

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Arise, O Lord, and go to your resting place, you and the ark of your mind, for the Lord has chosen Zion. He has desired it for his dwelling place.

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Zion is the mountain, okay, his dwelling place. This is my resting place forever. Here I will dwell for I have desired it.

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The world, the earth, is God's temple, okay? Spoiler alert, just in case you don't know the end of the story.

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Revelation 21, then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.

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And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride, adorned for her husband.

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And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man.

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He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more.

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Neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.

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So what sin did in separating humanity from its creator and destroying the temple,

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God will now renew with Jesus coming in as the second Adam, bringing the new kingdom, and ultimately the consummation will be the kingdom of heaven residing on earth with God himself on earth.

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If you don't know the Lord, this is not your promise. If you do know the

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Lord, no more tears, no more death, no more mourning, no more crying, no more pain.

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You'll be in the presence of God Almighty forever. It's gonna be a restored creation.

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When God pronounced the creation as very good, he meant that it was everything it intended to be. He intended it to be.

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There was nothing out of order. Everything that God said, okay, he defines. That's how he takes dominion.

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He defines his creation. And what do you see humanity doing? Try to redefine God's creation.

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God says marriage is a man and a woman. Humanity says no, it's two men, two women, three men, one woman.

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They just try to redefine what God has previously defined. You cannot do that.

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So the creation was God's temple and he was overseeing it. His kingdom was in place.

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So what is God's kingdom? I'm gonna give you a real quick, easy definition. God's kingdom is

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God's people in God's place under God's rule, enjoying

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God's blessing. Ultimately, at the restoration of all things, the consummation of all things, we are gonna be

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God's people in God's place under God's rule and enjoying God's blessing. Now think of it from a temple point of view.

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What is God's kingdom from a temple point of view? God's priests. We're a kingdom of priests.

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In God's temple, his earth. Under God's covenant, knowing

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God's presence forever. There's fullness of joy in his presence.

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There's rest in God's presence. We will have everything that we need right there with us without the stain of sin, without the thorns and the thistles that come out of the ground as we're trying to work, it's difficult.

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Things are gonna be much easier in the restored kingdom. It's important that we insist on the ongoing goodness of God's creation.

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Paul reminds us in 1 Timothy 4 .4 that everything created by God is good. Now when did

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Paul write this? Did he write it after the creation? Did he write it after the fall? Yeah, this is part of the

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New Testament. He doesn't say that most things created by God are good. He also doesn't say that everything created by God was good as in past tense.

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No, Paul affirms that God's entire creation is still good, it's good.

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We look around and we say how can God's creation be good? That's because we see fallen human beings bringing evil into the world and constantly trying to redefine what

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God has defined already. And it's up to us as God's vice regents, his image bearers to bring truth into the world and when we see a lie, we confront it with the truth.

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We proclaim the gospel that Jesus is Lord, that he's ruling and reigning. Long Island is

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Christ's island, we hear that a lot. Why? Because it's true. Long Island belongs to Jesus Christ as does all of America, as do all the continents, as does the whole cosmos.

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It's his temple. He's in the process of restoring it. So to sum this up really quick, there's a couple key biblical theological themes.

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The creation, God created his creation and he did a formation, he formed the spaces and he filled it.

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We have a kingdom, God's the king, the earth is his domain and this is his temple.

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So the story so far goes like this. God created a kingdom, it's good and he is the king.

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Now every week, we're gonna build on that last phrase so that by the time we get through all 16 lessons, we're gonna have a whole page of a description of what

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God's kingdom, a biblical theology, a summary statement of all of it. So any questions up until this point?

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Does this make sense? Does it help? Okay, so we have a structure, right?

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Creation, fall, redemption, restoration, right? That's the overlying theme, right?

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We have five characters, God, man, Jesus, cross, resurrection, not that cross and resurrection are characters but they're actions that Jesus takes, right?

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And we see kingdom, covenant and temple throughout all the scriptures, okay?

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And who's at the center of it all? Jesus, don't put yourself in the center. If you wanna put yourself in there, be the sinner that says have mercy on me, oh

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God, I'm a sinner, right? That's where you belong. But that's, how do

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I say it this way? It's good that you would, it's not good that you sin, it's good that you would admit your sinner, that you're a sinner, why?

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Because Jesus says, I have not come to help the healthy, I have come to help those who are sick and infirmed, right?

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Once, the first step in knowing who God is is acknowledging that you're not good enough, acknowledging your sin, that's why we needed

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Jesus. If we could get to heaven by doing good things on our own, why would

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God have to crucify his only son? This was the whole point, God is redeeming his creation, those who would place their faith and trust in him and him alone, that's the redemption part of the story.

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And you can be a part of that, you need to repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Stop thinking that you're good enough to get to heaven on your own, you're not, neither am

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I. May your boast be in the Lord, not in yourself, okay?