- Alright this is Genesis, The
Foundation Book of the Bible Lesson number three, lesson number three. So far in our study of Genesis,
I wanna do a little review. Some of you may not
have been here so we'll do a little review of
what we've talked about so far, very briefly. First of all we said
that the book of Genesis is inspired by God, it's not a fable, it's not magic or anything like that, it is an inspired book of the Bible. We talked about the nature
of the book, what's it about, and we said that it's about origins. If somebody ever asked you, what is the book of Genesis
about, boy you're thinking, wow Abraham and the creation
and so on and so forth. Really it's about origins. It tells us where things originated. Society, where did society originate. Where did the world come from. Where did sin come from
and so on and so forth. We said that the author was Moses, and he used oral records,
written transcripts, written records, rather
from the Patriarchs, guided by the Holy Spirit and he put together the book of Genesis. That is the mainstream thinking
about the book of Genesis, that Moses is the one
that put it together, and we said there are different
ways to divide the book if you wanna study it. You can divide it up into chapters. There are 50 chapters in all, of course, those chapters were added
by individuals later on to make the book a little easier to study. So if you wanna divide it into chapters, well the chapters one to 11 is the history of the world
beginning with creation, and then chapters 12
to 50 is the history of one particular nation
which is the Jewish nation. So you've got a macro
view chapter one to 11, then you've got a close-up, or a micro view chapters 12 to 50. Now there's another
way, a more natural way to divide the Genesis, and that's by generations, 10 generations. If you look through the book of Genesis you see that there are 10
generations beginning with Adam and ending with the sons of Jacob, and each one of them
recording and preserving and handing down their
records which were compiled and edited eventually
by Moses, as we said, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. So who wrote Genesis, basically
who kept those records? Well the Patriarchs kept those records. Adam kept the records and
Noah kept the records, and Noah's sons kept the
records and these kept being handed down from generation to generation. Alright, so tonight we're
gonna pass into the actual text of the book of Genesis. Genesis chapter one verse one. The foundational verse, not only of Genesis but of the Bible. In the beginning God created
the heavens and the Earth. We've seen this so often, we've
heard this verse so often, probably everybody knows it by heart. But a lot of times we don't
realize how much power there is in just this one verse. Some say if Genesis is the
foundational book of the Bible, then verse one is the
foundational verse of Genesis. Now think about this for a second. We know that the Bible is the
most produced book in history, and it is the most read book
in history, we know that. Even people who are not
believers acknowledge that the Bible is the most
translated, most printed, most distributed book in all of history. Well if that's the case, then this verse is the
most read verse in history. Cause when people read the Bible, they usually start at the beginning right? They don't always finish it, a lot of people start and
they get some where through, somewhere into Leviticus
there and they kind of lose interest sometimes you
know what I'm saying? But everybody begins at the beginning so everybody who has a
Bible in any language at least begins in the beginning. God created the heavens and the Earth. No matter whether they finish it or not, they've all read that particular verse. We say that it is the most
read verse in the Bible in history and in the world. Remember I mentioned that a
fellow named Henry Morris, Doctor Henry Morris. He has a book called The Genesis Record, I use a lot of his material, great book if you wanna read that as a companion to this class. He said the following, he says, "If a person really believes
Genesis chapter one verse one, "he will not find it difficult
to believe anything else "recorded in the Bible". And that makes sense. If you accept Genesis 1:1, then everything else does
not require more faith. Does not ask of you a
greater step of faith, okay. Now this verse really doesn't try to prove the existence of God, it merely assumes the existence. You'll notice if you read throughout the entire old testament, no Prophet, non of the
writers tried to make a case for the belief in God. We do that today in our
generation, in our time. But back then the fact that
God existed was like assumed. Nobody had to defend the existence of God. Certainly not the people
who were writing the Bible. Of course, it was written
before any disbelief occurred. Genesis was written before any, happened, before any type of disbelief. Not before disobedience, but
certainly before disbelief. Genesis, the things in
Genesis occurred before any false system of belief
was developed to reject God. So it doesn't attempt to
prove the existence of God, it merely assumes this
as a self-evident fact. However, this verse does
contain the information necessary to refute all of man's subsequent false ideas about
God, and about creation. I said this one verse
does that, just one verse. It's as if God knew what
man would ultimately think up to deny him, and so in the very first verse he preempts any possible false idea about himself. You can use Genesis 1:1, to refute any number of
false ideas and philosophies and we'll do that, let's take seven. Seven main philosophies
refuted by this verse, ready? First one is Atheism. Atheism says there is no God,
Atheism says there is no God and yet Genesis chapter one verse one says that in the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth. Again the Bible isn't trying
to prove there is a God, it merely makes a statement. So if someone were to say, where does it say in the
Bible that God exists because I'm an Atheist, and
I don't believe God exists. Well Genesis 1:1, in the beginning God. Alright let's look at another one. Pantheism, Pantheism says
that everything is God. So Atheists say there is no God, Pantheists say well everything is God. The trees, the rivers, the stars. Pantheism is a form of
thinking where people deify nature or give nature
a force of it's own, okay. But Genesis one verse one says that God is separate from His creation. He's not part of His creation. I know that sounds like a very noble idea when people say, oh I
see God in the trees, and I see God in the water
and I see God in the stars. Very poetic, not true. Because Genesis says in the beginning, God, over here, created the
heavens and Earth over here. He was before He made that
and He continues after, you know what I'm saying? So He is not part of His creation. He existed first and then
He created the world. So Genesis 1:1 refutes
the ideas of Pantheism. How about Polytheism, Polytheism teaches a multiplicity of Gods. We know just from looking
at history the Greeks, the Romans, many ancient people
as well as primitive peoples of today believed in a
multiplicity of Gods, they were poly, poly many
theists, Gods many Gods. And if someone. I always come back to this thing, someone would say, where
does it say in the Bible that there's only one God? Well it says in Genesis 1:1 it says that only one God created all things. It wasn't the good God and the bad God, and the up God and the down God, the male God the female God, and the God of trees
and the God of animals. It didn't say that, it's just one God created all these other things. How about the theory or, you know the. Well it's a theory or
philosophy of materialism. Materialism is the basis
for most modern thinking. It says that matter is eternal and that matter is the
only thing that exists. Communism for example, which
is a political philosophy. Communism is based on materialism, and the main idea being how to distribute the materials equally, okay. That's what Communism is about, it believes everything is matter, right? Everything is matter and so
our political philosophy is we're gonna figure out how to distribute this matter equally, alright. But Genesis one verse one says that only, excuse me, Genesis one says
that matter had a beginning. At some point it did not exist, and then God brought it to existence. Do you know that the best, the best and brightest minds
that the world respects. You know a Doctor Hawkings, the man who I think he has Cerebral
Palsy, he's in a wheelchair, but he's a brilliant scientist
and so on and so forth. The most brilliant scientist
of our age that they call him, and he wrote a book trying
to define or explain the world and how it came to be, and the best he's come up with, this is the brightest mind now, the best he's come up with
is, it was always there. And when people say what do
you mean it was always there? What brought it there, nothing,
it was just always there. It just was always there. The idea is let's not
question that too much, just accept that, you know,
just accept that logic swallow that logic and
then we'll build on that. But Genesis chapter
one verse one says that God created the heavens and the Earth. The heavens and the Earth
weren't always there, He created them. I'll deal with this a little
bit more as we go along. The next philosophy, dualism, and you know we can spend 13
weeks just on these seven alone but I'm just giving you a snapshot okay, just a thumbnail sketch of them. Dualism says, it's an ancient idea, developed into different systems by Plato the Greek philosopher, later Descartes who was
a French philosopher. Basically dualism says
that there are two powers that work in the universe, good and evil, and the interaction of these two is responsible for all that we see. For example, in Hinduism,
Hindus explain the beginning of the world as an interaction
between these two deities. There are many religions
that think of good and evil, the fight between them, the friction, the drama that takes place between them creates what is here now. But the Bible says in the
beginning God did the creating, not the good god, or the
high god, it just says God. It states that all that we see was created by only one power and that's God. The Bible accounts for evil, but evil is never the same as God and never at the same level. God is not in a struggle with evil, okay. There's only one supreme power at work, according to Genesis, and it was manifested
at the very beginning and the writers called Him, God. Not the lesser god, the
greater god, only one God. We understand why there's
evil in the world, we'll talk about that when
we get to the temptations so on and so forth. God had to allow His
creation to have free will otherwise creation could not take life. We'll go into that a little further on. Okay Dualism, Humanism, Humanism is a philosophy that teaches that man is the ultimate reality. There is nothing higher
or nobler than mankind. A lot of good works are
done to benefit mankind, and they are done by those
who hold to this philosophy. There's even a prize
for the, Humanist prize. Humanism, they say sometimes
people, oh he was a. You know at a eulogy at a
funeral, he was a great Humanist. Usually it may be because
he built hospitals, or she developed something
to help the poor. Humanism tries to account
for morality and goodness, and these type of things
looking only at human beings. Denying that there is a God, but Genesis 1:1 refutes this
idea because it teaches that God and not man is the ultimate reality. God was before man. God is the Creator of man. Man is at the highest point of creation, but is not the highest point of existence, there's a difference. God is at the highest point of existence. Man is at the highest
point of God's creation. And then there's of course, evolution, our most prevalent idea today, says that time and chance
working on eternal matter is responsible for the universe basically. If you wanna take evolution
and just shrink it right down to the least amount of words. Time and chance working
over billions of years on matter that was always there, has produced what we have today. We can also spend a lot of
time just debating that issue. But just looking at Genesis
1:1, what does Genesis 1:1 says. It says that in the beginning,
that's a specific time, God, not chance, created
the heavens and the Earth, it didn't evolve, He created it. Not the same thing, not
the same thing at all. So there are other theories
that we could talk about again, I haven't even moved to
Genesis one verse two, I'm still in Genesis one, I guarantee you we'll go
faster than this as we go along because we'll be here four
or five years if we don't. Let me show you some other theories that I've just squeezed together here. Naturalism, Naturalism says
that everything is matter. Everything is matter. But Genesis doesn't say that right? Not everything is
matter, God isn't matter. Deism, Deism is a
theological idea that says that there is a God, and God kind of sparked
everything, the Big Bang, poof! Then God lives over here
in another dimension and has absolutely nothing
to do with His creation. It just goes by itself, that's Deism. In other words, a Deist
believes that there is a God, but doesn't believe that God
is involved with His creation. We are not Deists, we
are Theists, T-H-E-I-S-T. We're theists, why because we
believe that there is a God, and according to Genesis
1:1 God is involved with us. He created the heavens and Earth, and if you keep on
going, verse two, three, all the way through Genesis you find out that God is actually very involved in the life of His creation. Agnosticism says we can't know, there's is not enough
information, we just can't know. But Genesis 1:1 tells
us no, no you can know. God in the beginning created
the heavens and Earth. There's something you know. Somebody ask you the question,
where did all this come from? Well God created it,
when did He create it? At the beginning, who created it? God created, what did He create? The heavens and the Earth,
and that's just verse one. Monism, Monism is kind of hard to explain. It's Genesis without God. [chuckles] It's Genesis without God, meaning Monists, they are looking for a theory, an all-inclusive theory that'll
explain everything, okay. But that doesn't include God. That's what a Monist is. Alright so one theory that
explains how everything got here but not with the component of deity. But Genesis 1:1 doesn't say, at some point in the past,
everything happened to appear. That's not what Genesis
said, it says God did this. There is a God involved in a universal all encompassing theory,
that's what Genesis is. It's a universal all
encompassing theory that explains how we got here, why we got here, why we are the way that
we are, where we're going, what will happen at the end of the world, what will happen after the
world, and so on and so forth. Determinism, Determinism
another word is fate. What is fate believe, fatalists believe? They believe in circular history, meaning everything just
goes round and round. History just keeps going
round and round and round. That's why it's fate you can't stop it. What will happen will happen and it just keeps going round and round. Hinduism, Hindus they believe in this. You keep going until you
reach a certain stage. You keep going round and round, it's fate. Science fiction writers,
wormholes things like that. Traveling back, anybody who writes a movie about traveling back in time, that idea is based on Determinism. Going back in time means here's the wheel, it's going round and round right? So you're over here, what
you're doing is you're taking a shortcut and you're going
backwards to a certain time. Why can you go there, well because it just keeps
going round and round so you're on the same circuit, okay? But Genesis says, in the beginning, so it isn't round and round. There was nothing then
there's a beginning, and if we keep reading through the Bible we find out that there is also an end. So history is not circular,
it's linear, okay. Pragmatism, a more modern. William Paley I think was the
philosopher for Pragmatism. Pragmatism says whatever
works is right, basically. Whatever works is right. Whatever works is right
has been translated into, I'm okay you're okay,
if that works for you, then that's what's good,
that's what's moral. It didn't work for me. So if you're gay and that works for you, then that's the good thing, why? Why is it a good thing,
cause it works for you. You believe in God, hey good
for you that works for you. Doesn't mean that there is a God, it just means that it works
for you, that's pragmatism. But Genesis teaches us, no what is right is
what God says is right. He's the one that determines what's right. Then another one Nihlism
neatsy, might makes right. Only the strong survive, super men. Long before there was
Superman, there was super men. Super men were the ones
who were breeded to be the intelligent, the
ones who had knowledge, the ones who had power, and those people in society
ought to make the rules, might makes right. So the Nazis took this
idea and they twisted it and said okay we have the
might, we make the right. Invading another country, so what, as long as it serves the father land, it's the right thing to do, and that's how they convinced themselves that the atrocities they
were doing were okay. Because they were superior
and so if they decided that's what they were gonna do, then that's what made it right. Okay just a little review of one verse and the power that it has. Alright so let's take a look at the words in Genesis chapter one verse one, just to go over them. I'm gonna save the first couple
of words in the beginning for a little later on, but I wanna talk about some of
the words and what they mean. I'm gonna skip the
phrase "In the beginning" and discuss that just
in a minute from now. First I wanna talk about in
the beginning God, that word, in the Hebrew Elohim. Hebrew term Elohim stresses the majesty and the omnipotence of God. Interesting also is that it
is a plural noun, it's Gods, but used in a singular
fashion in this verse, okay. Now this immediately suggests
the dynamic nature of God who is at the same time one,
yet He is more than one. Don't ask me to explain, to break down the idea of the trinity. The word trinity doesn't
appear in the Bible, but the idea of it is there, and it begins in Genesis,
right in the beginning we get this concept of a dynamic
God, Godhead if you wish. Then there's the word created. It refers to the unique work of God, and it's never used, in the Bible, it's never used in the
reference to human beings. The word actually means to call
into existence from nothing. When the Bible talks about man, humans, it says man forms or man fashions, but only God creates, okay. Now the whole system of faith rests here. Either random particles
which always existed, generated by themselves a more
complex and orderly universe, and then graduated to intelligent beings capable of applying and
developing intelligence. In other words the same matter
that made a rock made you. You either buy that
theory, or God created it. Those are the only two
theories that are out there. This is the choice that we have. Matter, particles, molecules,
they always existed, and through time and chance simply evolved into us, intelligent life form. Now remember non-intelligent,
non-animated molecules evolved into intelligent animated beings. The only place where this works is in the theory of evolution. It does not work in real life. You take any lab any
experiment at any level and see if an animate
matter ever has any way of developing into animate beings. In other words, a rock, a worm, let's pick the simplest
thing okay, that we can see. A worm never comes from a rock. But you have quote, "the
intelligencia" of our country staking their educational, academic, their reputations on this idea, and we're the crazy ones cause we believe that an intelligent being actually created a complex and intelligent
world, and we're the dummies. Next word, need to go
only got a few minutes. Heaven, in the beginning
God created the heaven. Now you need to understand this does not refer to the stars here, or the planets. In the Hebrew this refers to the space where these things are situated. When we refer to our existence,
we talk about the space, mass, time, universe right? Space, mass, stuff you can touch, time. The basic components of our existence. This heaven here in Genesis
would refer to the space component since the time component has already been introduced. The time component is in the beginning, there's the time component, okay. The mass element is about
to follow, God created what? The heavens and the Earth right? And so the heavens are
the space, the space. Now no word is used in
the Bible to express the idea of space so
the term heaven is used as the idea of space expands. In the Bible you have to
kind of look in context. If they're talking about the stars or if they're talking about the space they use the same word, okay. So in the beginning God
created the heavens, the space, and the Earth, again there
is no word in the Bible to refer to as matter,
you know the matter? There's no Hebrew word for that. Moses uses the term Earth, land, which describes the creation of the next basic
component which is matter. It is not yet shaped or formed,
it is simply in existence. So you see in the beginning God created, in the beginning, there's the time. Created the heaven, there's the space, and the Earth, there's matter,
the building blocks, alright. Then he says in the
beginning, there's time. I've said that the
universe is a combination of the elements of space, matter and time. Science teaches that each of
these elements is necessary for the universe to have
a meaningful existence. For example, if there is
space and time but no matter, then the universe is
empty, nothing happens. If there's just empty space
and time but there's no matter, there's nothing happening, you got a void, you've got a box, there's nothing in it. Or if there is matter,
which includes energy, and there's time but no space,
then there's no movement, it's just one big blob of thing, you know. So time is the third and
most important component because it permits perception
of the matter and the space. Genesis 1:1 says that the element of time was called into existence
along with space and matter, to comprise the time,
space, matter, continuum, which we call the universe. And no scientist would
disagree with you about the idea of time space and matter. Those are the basics. All I'm doing is I'm
showing you how Genesis describes that at the very beginning. Now Genesis said that this
time, space, matter component was not yet formed, and the next verses will go on to explain how God fashioned the
raw materials of creation into the universe that we now see. So at the beginning there's
time, he creates time, he creates space, and he creates matter. The building blocks of the universe that we now recognize, okay. Now some authors say that verse
one is the title of Genesis or it's a summary of events
that have already taken place, but as we said before,
the summary of Genesis one is given in chapter two verse four. In Genesis two verse four, there's where the summary of Genesis is, it says, "These are the
generations of the heavens "and the Earth when they were created". I'm almost done, stay with me. Also, all of the other sections
of Genesis have no titles, only the summary
statements showing the end of a particular generation. In Western rhyme we put the
title of the section at the top. The title of the section at the very top and then we give the information, but in the Bible they
give the information, and then they give the
title of it at the end, and that's what throws
us off sometimes, okay. Alright, so the first act
of the first day of creation was the bringing forth
of the building blocks of the universe, the time,
space, matter element. If you were translating
Genesis chapter one verse one into modern scientific English,
you could say the following: "The transcendent omnipotent
Godhead called into existence "the space, mass, time universe." All of that, imagine the economy of words, I didn't count them. In the beginning God created
the heavens and the Earth in 10 words, in 10 words, God explains how the
universe came into being and at the same time, refutes in 10 words, millions of books that have
been written to try to deny what God has said in
Genesis 1:1, 10, 10 words. It's amazing, I'm gonna
believe the entire Bible just on the strength of those 10 words. Okay, so that's the
beginning, Genesis 1:1, like I said we're not gonna be that slow for the entire thing, we're
gonna move on next week, but I encourage you, read ahead, read ahead, alright in
Genesis, gonna be a long study but I hope it'll be fruitful for you and give you some insight and some depth that you may not have had in past studies, that's it for now, we'll see
you next time, thank you.
