It's crazy how many doors we walk through each
and every day. A lot of us walk through dozens and dozens of doors, I'm talking about bedroom doors,
bathroom doors, front doors, back doors, revolving doors, there are doors everywhere. Reflexively,
almost intuitively, we just walk-through doors. Today I am talking about a door. Many of us, if
you're here or watching online, many of us are going through the Chronological Bible. The Bible
is truly the open door, literally the open door to life. The Bible tells you and me about our
destiny, it tells us about God, about ourselves, about others. It teaches us about everything
from relationships to our career, emotions. Everything is in God's word. Today we're going to
talk about the door that we're opening as we read through the chronological Bible. If you've not
done that yet, if you're not involved in it yet, you can pick a chronological Bible up and
read through it because over the next, believe it or not, year, are you ready for
that? Year, we're going to unpack the Bible. Obviously, I can't speak on every text, on every
story, on every detail that we read, I hope you know that. I am, however, going to hit the high
points and bring out some things, prayerfully, that you've never seen before or never thought
about because the Bible in one sentence, is about Jesus. Let me say that again, the Bible is
about the son of God, everything in this book points to Jesus. Right now, we're going
through the Old Testament, the old covenant and then we'll segue into the
New Testament. The Old Testament is the New Testament concealed; the New
Testament is the Old Testament revealed. Today, I thought about talking about the most read
verse in scripture, I'm going to talk about that verse that more people have read than any other
verse of scripture. I would say people have read this text more than any text in the history of
literature. How many people have said, okay, "I'm going to read through the Bible." We
start in the Book of Genesis and then after a while we get all caught up in the begats and
the begots and it begins to read like a Hebrew telephone directory and we're like, "I'm
done. I tried it and I don't understand it, so I'm done with the Bible." Everyone who's ever
tried to read the Bible, at least you've gotten to Genesis 1:1. That is what we're going to talk
about because that verse, that text is the key to the entire Bible. Let me say it again, Genesis
1:1 is the foundation of the entire Bible. What does it say? "In the
beginning God created the heavens and the earth." Sounds sort of
straightforward. You might think, that sounds theologically benign,
no big deal. "In the beginning God" God, Elohim. It's a plural noun. It refers to the
Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Isn't it incredible that Jesus is
mentioned in the first verse of the Bible? Later on, the Bible says in Genesis
1:26, when talking about God making man, "let Us make man in Our image." Again, the
plural, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, three in one, one in three. There are no way
our little pea brains can understand the power of the Trinity. To dumb it down, you
have a pie, and you slice the pie into three pieces, they're individual yet they're
one, so that is the vibe but God is one. There's perfect synchronization, perfect
harmony. "In the beginning God..." I'm going to do something
fun. Let me see, let me see. Who can I pick on? I'll pick on my lovely daughter
LeeBeth, LeeBeth come here for a second. This is LeeBeth. Now, I'm going to pick someone that I
don't know. I mean, I might have met you or seen you but let's just pick someone that I don't know.
Wow, I know everyone, it's amazing. How about you? Young lady in the purple sweater. Purple's
my favorite color. I'm sure we've met before. Come on up. I'm sure we've met before but just help
me, okay? How are you doing? Tell me your name. Lauren: Lauren. Ed Young: Hi Lauren. Have we met before? Lauren: Yes. Ed Young: Well, ugg. LeeBeth Young: You know her too? Ed Young: Okay. This example is falling apart but that's okay. Lauren, you're
nice and tall, that's great. Lauren: Thank you. Ed Young: It's great to be tall. Did you
know, we're going to find out, check this out. Some of the most influential matriarchs
and patriarchs in scripture were tall. I'm not saying it's bad if you're
not tall, if you're shorter, I'm just saying that, okay? Anyway. Okay. Lauren, right?
Lauren: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Ed Young: Okay. Let's say that Lauren and I are
talking and we're out in the lobby and Lauren, how are you doing? Blah, blah, blah, we're
talking. Let's say LeeBeth's over there, LeeBeth you can stand over there. Okay. So,
we're talking about A, B and C or whatever, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Then I see,
out at the corner of my eye, my daughter, one of four children, our oldest, the
favorite child. Don't tell your siblings that. would look, if Lee Beth comes walking up. Walk
up, stop, okay. I will look and go, Lee Beth, I want you to meet Lauren. Lauren, this is our
daughter and a phenomenal young lady, LeeBeth. That's what I would do. Please do that, please
introduce yourself and learn how to introduce your friends, people you know,
to others, it's very important. I just described to you what the writer of Genesis
did in Genesis 1:1. He didn't try to prove God, God is above proof, you can't prove
God. He didn't try to argue his case, he was just simply saying, hey, I want
you to meet God, God is. I mean, LeeBeth is. That's what we have going on in Genesis
1:1. Lauren, thank you very much. LeeBeth. I was talking to a friend of mine a
couple of weeks ago, who was an agnostic and he said, Ed, just prove God. I said, I can't
prove God. I said, I can't. I said, God's above proof. I said, you can't prove there is no
God. So, God's above that. Now, I'm not saying that there are no evidences for God, obviously
there're evidences, we don't, though, prove God. It's like we just discovered these scientific
laws, laws of nature, laws of physics. Scientists don't create them; they just discover
them. Most people get all hung up about science, does science and the Bible go hand in hand?
The Bible doesn't need science to prop it up. Science is playing 'catch up' with God. True Bible
and true science always complement one another. We have to understand though, God
was there, is there, will be there, forever and ever. "In the beginning God", the
beginner of the beginning, the unmade maker, God. The writer is going like, okay, here's God and
God simply opens the door and he begins to reveal himself to us. That's a Divine Introduction. Then
there's something else I want you to see in this first verse, look at the Dynamic Construction
of the deal. The Bible says, again, Genesis 1:1, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the
earth." This word "created" is the Hebrew word, “Barra'”. It's only referred to in terms of God.
God is creating out of nothing. When I create or when you create, we have to have something, right?
To utilize, some tools, some materials to create. "In the beginning God created" out of nothing is
"Ex Nihilo", which means, out of nothing. Seven times in the book of Genesis, God said,
God said, God said. God spoke the world into existence. No one understands that, you can't
explain it. We know that God's word is so powerful that he spoke this creation into existence. We have an opportunity to read his
written word. That's how powerful it is. Jesus was even called the word, the book
of John 1:14, "The word became flesh..." God's word. The book of 2 Timothy
3:16 says that God's word is breathed, is literally the breath of God, in the
original language it's theopneustos. He breathed his word on numerous writers
of scripture as they pinned this Holy book. Your life and mine hinges on this text because
it's either design or accident, it's either by random choice or it's intentional. That's the
issue. It's not, when God created the world in seven days, are those seven literal 24 hour days
or are they 24 billion? You can chase that rabbit all day long. The net effect, at the end of
the day, at the end of the day, is it creation or are we a kind of an accident.
At the end of the day. Don't you love to hear people use business speak? You're
not going to laugh very much because you use it. At the end of the day, at the end of the day, we
love to say that don't we? What are the optics of the situation? Well, the narrative is and let
me pivot. There's a lot of hair on that deal. Business speak. I thought I would throw in
some business speak. Guys we're the ones that think it's really cool to talk that way.
At the end of the day, it comes down to what I'm talking about and
I'm talking about what God's talking about. It's either by design or by accident. If it
is by design, "I'm made in the image of God", I just quoted Genesis 1:26. I have
a purpose, a plan, there's power and there's eternity, there's a heaven
to gain and a hell to shun. There's real meaning in my life, I'm one of a kind, I am
unique. After all, I have a green jacket on, and I like green. I don't care if you
don't like it, I just like it. I'm unique. If I'm an accident, if I'm
a product of bioptic soup. I've heard some evolutionists say that we're just
from bioptic soup. I go, stop, who made the Gumbo? Because if we're here by chance, we're
pretty much going to act like animals, we're just amped up algae. We're
spawning salmon, we're dog's in heat. If we're here just by chance to fornicate,
recreate and then we finally disintegrate. As we look at our culture, we
see people acting like animals. The reason? They've been taught by
Dr. Fuzzy face. For decades, you are an animal because all of the Dr.
Fuzzy Faces, they buy into Darwinism. Charles Darwin was a card-carrying racist, I
hope you know that. Do any research on him. The theory of evolution is taught as fact.
It's not fact. There are a lot of problems with evolution, the transmigration of the species?
The second law of Thermo dynamics? The morality? I could go on and on but I'm not here to do some
scientific lecture on creation versus evolution. What I'm here to tell you is, God made you,
God made the world, and it doesn't take someone really bright to discover that. In fact, we
have to learn to be an evolutionist, we're born with this eternity. The Bible says in Ecclesiastes
3:11, he has set eternity in our heart. Look what Dr. Paul Doty said from Harvard University,
"Our bodies are made up of 30 trillion cells. Every one of those cells are more
complicated than New York City." Hopefully they're in much
better shape than New York City. Sir Frederick Hoyle, an expert on
the origin of the universe, writes, "Believing life could result from chance is like
believing a tornado could sweep through a junkyard and the winds accidentally assemble a fully
functioning Boeing 747". People that turn their backs on creation, on design, have a vested
interest in keeping God out of their stuff. The Bible says in Proverbs 14:1, "The fool
says in his heart, 'There is no God.'" The word fool is not an intellectual
term, it's a behavioral term. People really don't have any intellectual
problems with what I'm talking about, they have behavioral problems on what I'm
talking about. We don't want God in our stuff, we don't want him there, so we just have
a vested interest in keeping him away. It's a worldview situation,
creation or we're here by accident. When our worldview is inverted,
our thinking is perverted. Think about it. When a man pretends to be a woman,
we're supposed to play make-believe with him. Perverted. We can't lie to Congress, but Congress
can lie to us to make us lie. Perverted. We can kill developing babies, that's okay but we
have to protect the eggs of sea turtles. Pro athletes and actors and actresses,
some of the most immoral people in the world lecture us about morality. Everything's inverted. Marxism is so sexy now
but Marxism has murdered 110 million people. We talk about freedom of speech and everything is
cool, and everything is fine, yet at every turn, certain groups are censoring
us. They talk about tolerance and they're tolerant if you talk their language
but the moment you stand up, especially for the things of God, for absolute
truth, boom, you're censored. It's more beneficial in our culture to have a
baby out of wedlock and marry the government than it is to get married. Blame
is better than responsibility. We have to see the implications of this situation.
If it's designed, if I'm created, if God spoke it into existence, I'm going to behave and live
one way, I'm going to see the world one way. But if I go, you know what, I'm going to reject
that and I go the other way, then after a while, we go down the proverbial rabbit hole
of rebellion and absurdity and that's what we're seeing in real time, right now.
Let me go back to the creation. Genesis 1:2, I think this is a very fascinating text. God
is creating and it says, "Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface
of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the waters." God began to do his work in
his creation. That was God's first creation. The first creation and the first
Adam had some trouble, didn't they? I want to address the Diabolical Destruction. Man
and woman had an open door policy with God. God made them in his image and everything
was flowing. God said though, don't touch the fruit on the tree in the middle of the
garden. So, to give you the cliff notes, Adam and Eve tried to find their own door to
God and the Bible called this behavior sin. I think it's humorous, it's kind of an
aside in your readings. When man sinned, they played a couple of games. Number one,
they played the cosmic game of hide and seek and then they played the blame game, Adam
blamed Eve and Eve blamed Adam, then they blamed the serpent, and he didn't have a leg to stand on. The blame game has been in effect for a long,
long time. Sin, literally, slammed the door shut in God's face, a barrier. This is set up in
the book of Genesis, in all of our readings we're going to see this foreshadowing, a barrier
between God and man. God saw this door dilemma and he could've said, "You know what, I'm done. For
eternity, I'm going to shut you out." Notice this, God created you and me. And because of
that we have a responsibility to God, we're obligated to God but also and I don't mean
to speak out of turn, God is obligated to us. Obviously, it's our choice, just like God
had a freedom of choice to create or not. This door dilemma though, was serious and
all creation held its breath to see what God was going to do about this door dilemma and
then we see a picture of the door. As we've read, because of sin, God kicked Adam and Eve out of the
garden, and he placed a couple of angels at the door of the eastern entrance to the garden. These
angels represent grace and mercy, foreshadowing. Then we have from Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel,
the first homicide was committed over a tithe. It started getting crazy, didn't
it? God said, I'm going to destroy the earth (Genesis 6:13). Yet,
he's spared Noah and his family. Because of that, you have Abraham, the father
of our faith, God initiated a covenant with him. Then you have Lot, I mean, Lot was definitely
wheels off. This whole scenario with Sodom and Gomorrah. You have the sinfulness of man.
You see, God picturing and talking about the door. God, for example, brought up the door when the children of Israel were
getting emancipated from slavery. What did God say? Take the blood of the lamb and
apply it to the door. (Exodus 12:7) And then, God set up worship, the tabernacle and
it was all about the door to the Holy of Holies. (Exodus 26) We're going to see this in our
reading, the foreshadowing, the door, the door, the door. Then Jesus announced, during his 36
month public ministry, in John 10:9, he said, "I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be
saved, and will go in and out and find pasture." How incredible is God?
The door was open, man sinned and slammed the door shut.
God began to foreshadow the door as he progressively revealed himself
to people. Then we have Jesus saying, "I am the door." And then in Revelation 3:20
(NKJV), Jesus said, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and
opens the door, I will come in to him," It was God's choice, his initiative, his will,
to do all of this. We're made in his image. We have a will, we either open the
door and invite Christ in or not. God wants to create, in your life, a new creation.
And the first creation, the first Adam, messed up but in this new creation, 2 Corinthians 5:17
(NKJV) tells us, "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have
passed away; behold, all things have become new." The first Adam messed up, the first creation. The
second Adam, Jesus, is all about the new creation. If you're away from Christ,
your life is empty and void and the spirit of God is moving over your life.
All you have to do is open the door of your heart and Christ will come in and
you will be a new creation. [PRAYER]
