Transcript Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s And unto God

IN THE BEGINNING
Genesis from the Creation
to Abraham
GENESIS CHAPTER ONE
• Gen 1:1
• In the beginning God created the
heavens and the earth.
• God in the Hebrew here: Elohim, is
plural, indicating the Trinity
GENESIS CHAPTER ONE
• Matt 3:16-17
• When He (Jesus) had been baptized, Jesus
came up immediately from the water; and
behold, the heavens were opened to Him,
and He saw the Spirit of God descending
like a dove and alighting upon Him. And
suddenly a voice came from heaven,
saying, "This is My beloved Son, in whom
I am well pleased."
GENESIS CHAPTER ONE
• Elohim refers to God as creator
• God the Father, God the Son, and God the
Holy Spirit were all involved in creation
• John 1:1-3
• In the beginning was the Word, and the Word
was with God, and the Word was God. He
was in the beginning with God; all things
were made through him, and without him was
not anything made that was made.
GENESIS CHAPTER ONE
• Heb. 1:1-2
• In many and various ways God spoke
of old to our fathers by the
prophets; but in these last days he has
spoken to us by a Son, whom he
appointed the heir of all things,
through whom also he created the
world.
GENESIS CHAPTER ONE
• Col. 1:15-17
• He (Christ) is the image of the invisible
God, the first-born of all creation; for in
him all things were created, in heaven and
on earth, visible and invisible, whether
thrones or dominions or principalities or
authorities--all things were created through
him and for him. He is before all things,
and in him all things hold together.
GENESIS CHAPTER ONE
• Is the Genesis account a myth or
historical?
– Did Jesus and the New Testament
writers consider the narrative
important?
– Genesis is quoted 60 times in 17
books of the New Testament
GENESIS CHAPTER ONE
• Matt. 19:4-6
• He (Jesus) answered, "Have you not read
that He who made them from the
beginning made them male and
female, and said, 'For this reason a man
shall leave his father and mother and be
joined to his wife, and the two shall
become one flesh?”
GENESIS CHAPTER ONE
• Matt. 24:37-39
• As were the days of Noah, so will be the
coming of the Son of man. For as in those
days before the flood they were eating and
drinking, marrying and giving in marriage,
until the day when Noah entered the
ark, and they did not know until the flood
came and swept them all away, so will be
the coming of the Son of man.
GENESIS CHAPTER ONE
• The word “created” in Hebrew is bara
– The word is used only of God’s activity
• God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit existed before
creation
• Eph. 1:3-4
• Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every
spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as
he chose us in him before the foundation of the
world, that we should be holy and blameless
before him.
GENESIS CHAPTER ONE
• The Trinity actually planned things before time
began
• Thinking, love, communication, relationships,
“personhood” were present before time
– These things did not evolve in us from
primordial slime
– They did not rise up out of our bodies, our
brains
– They were already in existence before time
began
– We humans received them from God
GENESIS CHAPTER ONE
• Our bodies do not create our
consciousness (of self, the world, God)
– Our bodies are the seat, the vehicle, or
our consciousness
– This consciousness will not perish when
we die—it will continue to exist
– In either in the Presence of God; or
separated from that Presence
GENESIS CHAPTER ONE
• Time and history of our universe
started “in the beginning.”
• The heavens and earth were created
out of nothing: ex nihilo
GENESIS CHAPTER ONE
• Gen. 1:2
• The earth was without form, and void;
and darkness was on the face of the
deep. And the Spirit of God was
hovering over the face of the waters.
• The creation was formless—not divided
into its various elements: light and dark;
heaven and earth; sea and land; plant
and animal
GENESIS CHAPTER ONE
• God the Father existed with Christ and
the Holy Spirit before time
• There had been a “creation” of heavenly
beings before our universe
– The Trinity apparently created an angelic
host, 1/3 of which rebelled and became
Satan and his demons
GENESIS CHAPTER ONE
• Is 14:12-15
• "How you are fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son
of the morning! How you are cut down to the
ground, you who weakened the nations! For you
have said in your heart: 'I will ascend into
heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of
God; I will also sit on the mount of the
congregation on the farthest sides of the north; I
will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will
be like the Most High.' Yet you shall be brought
down to Sheol, to the lowest depths of the pit.”
GENESIS CHAPTER ONE
• Ezek. 28:12
• "Son of man, take up a lamentation for the
king of Tyre, and say to him, 'Thus says the
Lord God: "You were the seal of perfection,
full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You
were in Eden, the garden of God; every
precious stone was your covering...14 You
were the anointed cherub who covers; I
established you; you were on the holy
mountain of God; (cont.)
GENESIS CHAPTER ONE
• Ezek. 28:12 (cont.)
• “…you walked back and forth in the midst
of fiery stones. You were perfect in your
ways from the day you were created, until
iniquity was found in you. By the
abundance of your trading you became
filled with violence within, and you sinned;
therefore I cast you as a profane thing out
of the mountain of God”
GENESIS CHAPTER ONE
• God is outside of time: before it, in it now,
and already in the future
• Genesis 1:2 and the “gap” theory:
– Instead of rendering verse 2 as “was ”without
form and void” in (Hebrew tohuw and bohuw)
– It is rendered “became” without form and
void
– Implying that is was perfect and became
chaotic
GENESIS CHAPTER ONE
• Is 45:18
• For thus says the Lord, who created the
heavens, who is God, who formed the
earth and made it, who has established
it, who did not create it in vain (tohuw),
who formed it to be inhabited: "I am the
Lord, and there is no other.”
GENESIS CHAPTER ONE
• Is there a contradiction between Gen.1:2 and
Is. 45:18?
– Perhaps the earth was not created without
form and void, but became thus
– The universe became chaotic with the angelic
fall after an initial perfect creation
• This was followed by a gap of time during
which the Lord began to restore the universe
from its chaos to order
– This gap could have lasted billions of years in
which the earth, plants, animals (even
dinosaurs) developed
GENESIS CHAPTER ONE
• The creation narrative that follows
focuses on the reordering of the chaotic
world with the creation of man and
woman as special creations in a special,
protected region (the Garden of Eden)
• Perhaps, but there may be better
explanations than the gap theory
GENESIS CHAPTER ONE
• Gen. 1:3
• Then God said, "Let there be light"; and there
was light.
• God “said”: the universe was created by the
Word, by divine speech.
• Heb 11:3
• By faith we understand that the worlds were
framed by the word of God, so that the things,
which are seen, were not made of things,
which are visible.
GENESIS CHAPTER ONE
• God said is used nine times in Genesis 1
• The Word of God is very powerful
– It is bigger than a book made of paper
and print
– It created the universe
– And the Word is ours; we have access
to it daily
GENESIS CHAPTER ONE
• Gen. 1:4-5
• And God saw the light that it was
good; and God divided the light from
the darkness. God called the light
Day, and the darkness He called
Night. So the evening and the
morning were the first day.
GENESIS CHAPTER ONE
• The process of organizing the universe involved
differentiating, separating things—making order
– Differentiating light from dark
– Differentiating the water in the heavens (clouds) from
water on earth (the seas)
– Then dividing the dry land from water
– Then differentiating living from non-living things
(plant life vs. inorganic matter)
– Then unconscious life from conscious (plant life vs.
animal) life
– Then finally God-conscious, God-communicating,
spiritual life from that which could not (man vs.
animal)
GENESIS CHAPTER ONE
• The case for a six-day creation:
• Ex 20:11
• For in six days the Lord made the heavens and
the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and
rested the seventh day. Therefore the Lord
blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.
• There was no visible sun and moon yet (no
earthly, human sense of time)
– The first six days were not necessarily 24
hour, human-time, days
GENESIS CHAPTER ONE
• “Days” in Scripture
– Solar day of 24 hours
– A longer period of time when the
purposes of God are to be accomplished
• The Day of the Lord
• The day of visitation, judgment,
salvation, atonement
GENESIS CHAPTER ONE
• Joel 3:18
• And it will come to pass in that day that the
mountains shall drip with new wine, the
hills shall flow with milk, and all the
brooks of Judah shall be flooded with
water
• Acts 2:20
• The sun shall be turned into darkness, and
the moon into blood, before the coming of
the great and awesome day of the Lord.
GENESIS CHAPTER ONE
• “Weeks” in Scripture
– Jacob’s week = seven years
– Daniel’s 70 weeks = seventy years
• Gen 29:26
• And Laban said, "It must not be done so in
our country, to give the younger before the
firstborn. Fulfill her week, and we will give
you this one also for the service which you
will serve with me still another seven years.”
GENESIS CHAPTER ONE
• “Evening, morning, the third day.”
– Could be 24 hours
– But the sun was not visible yet
• To God (or to a spaceman) a day is only 24
hours if we are on earth spinning once
around its axis
– You need a clock to tell time in outer space
• “Evening, morning, the first day:” could
indicate a beginning and an end
GENESIS CHAPTER ONE
• God the Father is not only the creator of the
universe: matter, space, and energy
– He is also the creator of time
– And as the creator, He is separate from His
creation, having existed before the creation,
and being capable of existing after the end of
this current age
• He can choose to enter into His creation
(which He has done in Christ and in the Holy
Spirit)
• But He is also outside of space and time
GENESIS CHAPTER ONE
• God is in, what C.S. Lewis calls, the
“unbounded Now.”
– God is aware of this moment, but is also able
to be aware of and in the past and the future
– He is not stuck in time as we are
• This is how He is able to answer all of our
prayers:
– God has an infinite amount of time to answer
our finite prayers, however many of these
prayers there have been in history
GENESIS CHAPTER ONE
• II Peter 3:8
• But, beloved, do not forget this one thing,
that with the Lord one day is as a thousand
years, and a thousand years as one day.
• Ps. 90:4
• For a thousand years in Your sight are like
yesterday when it is past, and like a watch
in the night
GENESIS CHAPTER ONE
• God the Father is outside of time and space
• Time is the fourth dimension; God is in a
“fifth dimension.”
• The problem of a two dimensional world
understanding a three dimensional world
• Examples:
– A student given six days to write her
autobiography
– A film maker animating an aquarium
GENESIS CHAPTER ONE
• Ps. 115:3
• But our God is in heaven; He does
whatever He pleases.
• Is. 55:8
• "For My thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways My ways," says the
Lord.
GENESIS CHAPTER ONE
• Josh. 10:12-14
• Then Joshua spoke to the Lord in the day
when the Lord delivered up the Amorites
before the children of Israel, and he said in
the sight of Israel: "Sun, stand still over
Gibeon; And Moon, in the Valley of
Aijalon” ... So the sun stood still in the
midst of heaven, and did not hasten to go
down for about a whole day. And there has
been no day like that, before it or after it,
that the Lord heeded the voice of a man.
GENESIS CHAPTER ONE
• The miracle of the wine at Cana in
John 2
– The miracle of a grape seed growing
– The supernatural goes faster than, and
slower than, the naked eye
• The miracles of restoring things: sight,
legs strength, withered hands
GENESIS CHAPTER ONE
• Time and Einstein’s general and special
theory of relativity (time dilation)
• Time is slower under the influence of
gravity
– Time near heavy celestial objects (black
holes) is very slow
• Time is slower if travelling faster
– Time on the galaxies that are moving
faster is slower than those that are
moving slower